[Closed] This should stop the 'term time holiday' arguements

The difference is I have an imperative for my occasional RLJ which is my safety and it impinges on on no one else

Oh, pure sassenach gold, right there.

The difference is I have an imperative for my occasional RLJ which is my [s]safety[/s] convenience as I don't want to wait for the traffic to pass the pinch points before I get there

and it impinges on on no one else other than giving weight to overall perceptions among drivers that cyclists deem themselves above the rules

Drac - if every parent took their kids out for a different two weeks how disruptive would that be?

Stoner I agree with your first line but why has this become an issue? Is it political meddling or is it something that has now become an issue because parents/headmasters have gone beyond the point of using common sense? I suspect the latter.

The mention of the RLJing anyway is a classic diversion tactic 'cos he is backed into a corner

er, well I mentioned it first [not Stoner]
And my kids are way past going to school so no real corner to back into I'm afraid

Drac - if every parent took their kids out for a different two weeks how disruptive would that be?

Drac - if every parent took their kids out for a different two weeks how disruptive would that be?

They carry on lessons as if they'd been there, well speaking with the experience of my kids' school anyway. So it makes no difference.

Jota, don't worry, TJ is just trying to discredit stoners argument

(the actual chain of events, and who actually said what are irrelevant now)

Shortly he will claim that stoner is "ranting"

Then he will repeat the same line in 1000 different ways till everyone is dead.

At least that what normally happens.

The difference is I have an imperative for my occasional RLJ which is my safety and it impinges on on no one else.

I reckon taking your kid off for holiday - say - in the middle of June would be a fair bit safer travelling than the Friday or Saturday when they break up, unless of course you come across TJ RLJing
So it's a family safety issue

TJ earlier 😉

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A friend's brother skipped a whole year of school when they moved from Scotland to England aged 7 due to the different age cut off points, it's a wonder the school didn't implode.

EDIT 101 sanctimonious returns!

100 sanctimonious returns!

Market forces..... If this happens then the increase in holiday time travel and holidays will increase, and school time demand will decrease... So prices for holiday time flights and static caravans in drizzly Cornish dunes will increase.

November half term my wife got the dates wrong, booked the wrong week, so called the caravan park and our three night stay more than doubled in price.... A single week later in the year.... On a half empty holiday park.... So there was not even the demand, just parent raping prices.

If this is all "ok" ... Then I would like to introduce you to.....

The bikemongers holiday special pricing on inner tubes. Normally around a fiver but during the holidays they are only £13 each. With 20" tubes being even more.

Kids can learn far more during a week of surfing in france than they can in school. But this would price us out of overseas holidays... Great education system that discourages seeing the world.

One of our local schools (thankfully not too local) "Just three per cent of pupils leaving St Aldhelm’s Academy last summer scored the benchmark five A* - C GCSE grades, including English and maths.". This is the real problem, not some kids exploring a French market and canoeing down a river, or climbing a mountain... Or learning to surf etc etc. Sort out a failing system and leave our family holidays alone you ****s. Grab your headlines, pretend to do something, be tough on holidays AND the causes of holidays.

The fine system wont work.... The current fine is £50 per child.... Billy bloody bargain. The holiday I used to take to France was £500 in early June (still good swell season) and £2800 in August... Even with fines I am over £2000 better off and the surf would be much better too.

Lets apply this crap to a normal situation and go back to inner tubes... If you try and buy a tube for a fiver during term time, I will fine you 50p per tube for having the nerve to go against my authority and trying to have fun on a bike.

Just out of interest, how would you feel if the teacher pulled a sickie to take advantage of a cheap flight, or you bumped into them at Fort Bill ´cos they fancied seeing the race?

What this situation really needs is stunt-double kids. Poor kids, from rubbish schools who don't bother counting them properly, coulsd attend in their place.

The middle class kids get their poncy holidays, and the poor kids impersonate them at their school, get some cash for their parents to spend on booze, fags, lottery tickets and sky TV, and a week at a better school. Everyone wins !

....oh and charlie, what if evryone took their kids out to take advantage of these cheap holidays? Would they stay cheap? Why not finish school a week early so everyone can go but not tell the nasty travel agents? But then it's a conspiracy, isn't it? Schools and travel agents working together 50/50. Your example only serves to show that the seller of the tubes (holidays) is at fault.

Just out of interest, how would you feel if the teacher pulled a sickie to take advantage of a cheap flight, or you bumped into them at Fort Bill ´cos they fancied seeing the race?

I wouldn't be happy but if they'd put in a genuine request for holidays and it had been sanctioned it'll be fine.

Blimey! We took our 2 Rhodes foe 2 weeks and one of which fell in term time. We toured the ancient sites,absorbed the culture and did a bit of beach & snorkeling.

Back at school they had a non-competitive sports day, a film and various other non curriculum based activity. I would suggest that they both increased their world view, and knowledge of a great civilisation. However, we received a letter from the Educational Welfare officer advising us that the school had dobbed us in for "unauthorised absence" - we had written 3 letters to school explaining but they refused to respond as the did not "authorise" the absence.

To add insult to injury the school was closed for strike action only a few days afterwards, of course that was over pensions not the welfare and education of children. This was then followed by one teacher taking 3 weeks extended vacation to see family in the US.

Pot, kettle and mucky arse springs to mind!

Both my two are at the top of the top set (they don't get this from me!) and when they have finished their work they are then told to find something to fill the remaining time - has been up to half an hour on too many occasions.

Perhaps if the school system was a little better organised and showed more interest in developing all their pupils abilities across the board, then parents may take their petty diktats with a little more seriousness.

The teacher gets how many weeks off a year? As said previously some people just can't get time off themselves in the school holidays.

wrightyson: The ammouint of time is irrelevant. It's all in school holiday time so if they want a holiday with their kids they have to go somewhere cheaper because during term time they have an obligation to educate your children. An obligation which should be backed up by the parents.

EDIT. But fair point. If people absolutely have no other option, fine. If it's just for the sake of cheap flights etc. then it's a little harder to justify.

All this does is give the failing 'can't make a decision to save my [s]school[/s] life headteachers' a get out of jail free card to carry out any active pro active management and punishes the decent heads, who previously considered each case on its merits a kick in the bollox / female genitals through increased numbers of unauthorised absences in the quality report.

Dogtoo - irrelevant. Teachers get paid to teach.

I'm guessing a lot of the people stating that the prices don't change haven't actually checked......
I've actually moved a business trip this year due to costs - guess what?...... The client is ACTUALLY taking their holiday then instead for the exact same reason.
Over £2k difference in our holiday for just a few weeks apart in timings.
Bonus is that we are able to work during the holidays now at a cost saving!
Both girls are in the top 2%, our eldest is already doing comprehensive school work 6mths before leaving junior school yet in the last year alone they have had over 12wks where they have had reduced lessons due to 2 school performances and an Xmas play. Was this caught up? Nope.
Were lessons kept going for those children NOT in any of the plays? Nope.

Over £2k difference in our holiday

As I've said previously I don't agree with dragging a kid out for 2 weeks but I don't see the issue with 3 days. I/We (mrs w'son) have a good insight to all this as she regularly helps out in the school, at least one full day a week sometimes two, she does this free of charge and purely to help. So when a kid is off i know nothing changes in the class they just carry on and said kid misses out on what is being taught!! That is the parents choice and I strongly believe as a responsible parent you can make that choice without your child suddenly becoming bottom of the class. There are far bigger issues to be tackled in schools such as useless teachers who shouldn't be teaching, lack of discipline in class, and my biggest concern, (which does involve one of our children) class sizes. How one teacher can be expected to teach 36 kids at 10 yrs of age is beyond me, hence the reason the wife specifically targetted working in our daughters class!

Why exactly are people having a go at teachers here...? The amount of holidays they get has bugger all to do with the OP's point.
TJ - go into the corner and have a talk with yourself...
Stoner - take your nipper to France, he'll love it and if comes back with half a dozen phrases in French (nice ones!) then he'll already be at the top of the class at that age.
Can we all agree not to vote for Gove next time we get the option?

The difference is I have an imperative for my occasional RLJ which is my safety and it impinges on on no one else

Until the day you get it wrong and are under the wheels of a lorry. Then it effects quite a lot of people.

Really what you are doing, assessing the situation and behaving how you feel is acceptable, is no different to Stoner.

I sympathise with cost issue - just check prices of skiing in 2nd week of January!!!

Quite a well balanced article in Torygraph today on this issue:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9092612/At-my-free-school-the-end-of-term-will-be-too-good-to-miss.html

....While deterrents are a good and necessary part of any system, what is always more effective is the initial environment in which such decisions are taken. One of the reasons parents feel morally justified in taking their children out of school early is that they have learnt through years of experience that the last week of school at the end of term is often filled with games and movies, and that little actual learning takes place....[b]Then the question becomes less about authorised absences and heads’ decisions, and more about what is going on in our classrooms. [/b]

Why are teachers choosing to put on films instead of spending those last few crucial lessons of the term setting end-of-term assessments, benchmarking children and informing them of how they can improve next term? ...At our free school, Michaela Community School, which hopes to open in Tooting, south London, in September, we will have expectations for behaviour. Those last few lessons at the end of term will be for testing and benchmarking. Children want to know how they are doing in comparison to their peers. Competition motivates all children, whatever their standing in the class. They also want to know that the work they have been doing all term was for something. The teacher can go through common errors, and children will be given an armoury of tools to start the following term better equipped to improve their standing in the class. The teacher then has time, over the holiday, to think about how to tackle the specific needs of each class: needs that have been highlighted by the assessments.

[b]When the end of term is treated as an extremely important part of the child’s development, suddenly the idea of having them miss this time isn’t so attractive to parents. When children themselves are motivated to take part in this crucial and rather exciting event, parents will find their child refusing to leave town early, for fear of not being able to demonstrate their intellectual prowess on the academic battlefield.
[/b]

Now if all schools did this, perhaps the problem would be solved without the need for politicians to get involved, but that is probably wishful thinking in all regards.

Not a popular view here but I think Gove is right. You take your child out of school to go on holiday you are showing disrespect to the teachers and telling your kid that it is OK to cut corners. That isnt a great lesson to teach them. I'm being a little sanctimonious maybe but it just feels dead wrong.

.....arent we all always banging on about the something for nothing culture that plagues us? Kid doesnt have to do the work and gets the holiday anyway. Doesnt matter if you are 5 or 15yrs, they need to learn that they have to graft.

Doesnt matter if you are 5 or 15yrs, they need to learn that they have to graft.

I think all it teaches is that attendance is more important than performance.

It's like working for a company where how hard you work is judged by the hours you do not the results you get

I think all it teaches is that attendance is more important than performance

mmmmmm. It says "I'm going to do what I like, Jack."

mmmmmm. It says "I'm going to do what I like, Jack."

It depends on how you are frame it to your children then doesnt it.

Its interesting that THM, McBoo and I usually find ourselves on the same side of the argument, but here not so. Can I ask whether you both have children?

Yessir. Three.

This is the glum, cheerless Presbyterian (retired), part of my character showing it's face rather than my more usual libertarian free love, gay friendly sunny disposition.

Its possible we have the same argument mixed up. I take Jr out of school early to get to see the TdF as part of a month-long road trip. It's not a money thing - in fact I dont think it would cost a great deal more to go in holiday time only. Maybe an extra hundred quid or so on the ferry.

I see it as an opportunity to teach him new stuff as part of an extended trip, and of course to see the TdF. Do you think he might be rather interested in it?
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Stoner - yes, it is interesting isn't it and especially to have TJ re-quoting me, and for us to be in broad agreement!!

Yes, I have two kids at school and while I sympathise with the arguments and accept that some trips may be (?) educational, I am a bit of a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to this kind of discipline issue. Would never have occurred when I was a child, but part and parcel of modern selfish society IMO (of course.). I think it sets poor precedents and examples for kids hence my tongue-in-cheek original post.

But then again I am a traditionalist on these kind of things as my kids would point out - I even like them to look smart in their sports kit. Look smart, play smart etc. And I moan that oranges are no longer supplied at half-time!!!!! 😉 So what do I know??

But I think the article in the Telegraph is a far more sensible solution than fining parents (which to be honest is rather silly). [b]Much better to make the end/start of term indispensable for all.[/b] Perhaps I will also write that into my new business plan for a brand new type of school!!

Arrgggh - what a load of guff 😕

And the Tories badge themselves as the champions of "small Government", less regulation, less red tape??

Only when said red tape is related to profit margins, it seems. This has a whiff of Stalinisim to it (especially the poster who suggested removal of passpoerts!!!) Do we [i]really [/i] need the State to be involved in such minor and trivial issues?

If your kid is doing badly - performance, attendance, behaviour - then by all means there should be measures to put in place to make sure that improvements can be realised. Really has very little to do with holidays...

I must be more of a hippy than I thought! 🙂

for a time I was considering delaying sending Stoners Jr to school for a few years to be able to do more extended travelling with them. They're bright boys, Jr#1 is the only one in his class of 27 to have to get his reading books from the class above. I like the Scandinavian model of not starting formal education until they are 7. There's a greater dependency on the parent to start the education process off admittedly.

I agree with discipline, I dont agree with dogma. TJ is dogma personified: no scope for common sense, discretion, the individuality of each man's position.

hmmm, maybe mcboo and thm are just.....old.... 😉

It's hardly a shooting offence, and I can understand why a parent would do it, I'd naturally always want parents to decide what they want for their kids and the government keeps their nose out.

....but you know.

Slightly mixed views on this.

I teach but almost exclusively GCSE and A level groups. At that age group missing students can be a royal pain in the arse. I've frequently ditched lesson plans because a critical mass of students were missing so introducing new topics would be futile. Of course students are going to be missing for lots of other legitimate reasons but anything to reduce it has to be a good thing. Parents here seem to be talking about this (quite understandably) from their and their child's perspective and can't see the harm in their child missing specific days but those in charge of schools have to take a larger view of what the continuous absence of a few students does to the overall progress of teaching groups. There's a chicken and egg aspect to this too - if a school knows its going to be missing a chunk of kids at the end of term it'll put on the crappy weeks of not very productive work which then persuades more parents to flaunt the rules and so it continues.

But.... generic rules from above are rarely great and our mate Gove is a past master of this. All leave from school and all parents are not the same. Some leave from school is incredibly worthy, some is a waste of time educationally and socially. Some parents are very conscientious about helping their child catch up and some are not. I've had kids come back from time away (I always give them the work they would have been doing in class to take away with them) with reams of notes and a parental report telling me how they got on but I've also had kids whose parents told them to put the work in the bin and others who rang me up and asked me what [b]I[/b] was going to do to help [b]their [/b]child catch up because [b]they [/b]took them away against the school's wishes.

Some kids have the most amazing experiences in school time too. One student I taught was given time away from school (in an exam year) to race a 35ft yacht across the Atlantic with just his mum. He came back (with reams of work done onboard) and gave the best assembly I've ever seen (better than all the staff's efforts) on his experience; caught up on all the work and went on to be head boy. I've also supported another child's term time holiday request which was granted because Dad was in the Army serving in Afghanistan and this was his only opportunity to spend time with his child (mum had died some time before) between time away on duty and give his parents time without her to look after for him. It would have been rude not to in that situation and Gove could go swivel if the same situation came up again.

Also... and I'll get flamed for this by my junior school colleagues... there is a difference between a reception class kid and an A level one in terms of the consequences of missing a week - mainly due to the more independent nature of the learning at that young age and how they are progressing at very different speeds already. "Topics" for the littleuns are really just frameworks to hang core skills development to.

Yep, the Scandis do some interesting things and there is no doubt in my mind that parents can and should have a more active role in their kids education. The Headmaster at my son's school makes it very clear at the start of their academic careers that education is a partnership between schools, parents and pupils. So if we decide to unilaterally break our part of this relationship, then we have only ourselves to blame.

It is also ironic that people see fit to ridicule Gove for his looks. Imagine if he was not a WASP man. But then again I am being hypocritical as I occasionally refer to Ed Milliband as Wallace - hence glass houses and stones, as I said earlier this morning!! 😉

Slightly mixed views on this...But.... generic rules from above are rarely great and our mate Gove is a past master of this. All leave from school and all parents are not the same. Some leave from school is incredibly worthy, some is a waste of time educationally and socially. Some parents are very conscientious about helping their child catch up and some are not...

Also... and I'll get flamed for this by my junior school colleagues... there is a difference between a reception class kid and an A level one in terms of the consequences of missing a week - mainly due to the more independent nature of the learning at that age and how they are progressing at very different speeds already.

Agree +1

Hey, stoner - careful, I'm not THAT old!!! 😉

So if we decide to unilaterally break our part of this relationship, then we have only ourselves to blame.

Its only a case of "blame" if the results are deleterious.

And if it has a beneficial effect then am I allowed to "take the credit"?

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Is he flossing there?

Stoner, I shall be sending you an invoice for a new keyboard shortly.

😆