Going on holiday, schools says no to 12yr old…..

Off for 3 weeks in florida. Two weeks during the easter school holidays and taking our 12yr old son off school for an extra week. Completed the holiday form, got a note back from the ‘holiday taliban’ to say that the week during school time would be un-orthorised. What career / life enhancing opportunity is he going to miss? Plan to write to the school to point out some of the educational aspects of the holiday, (sorry -educational experience) he will have with his parents. Oh and up to now I have supported the schools 100% But this is such a load of ‘we know best’ bull s**t.

un-orthorised

I suggest he stays in school 🙂

I hope you are not going to pander to them, YOUR family, you decide what is best…

homeskoolin’s da foture innit!

what happens if you say s*d it and go? do you get fined?

just means the school wont get shit for poor attendance, dont worry about it. Speak to individual teachers if your worried about him missing stuff

I’d rather go to school than spend a 3rd week in Florida.

That’s normal policy in most state schools and goes by the government guidlines.

Basically they unauthorise it, you still take him/her out of school for the week and it goes down as unauthorised. This means little unless your child has a history of being off a lot then you might get a visit from the EWO. Otherwise it’ll never be a problem.

Nothing to do with ‘we know best’. Although there is reasonable evidence and it’s reasonably obvious that prolonged periods of absence lead to poor exam performance. Also, as the school has to record it as unauthorsied then their % attendance goes down. This does not look good and is another government target that needs to be hit.

Take him to Florida, enjoy it, just don;t go to chuffin’ Disney if you want it to be educational ;0)

Florida, is not my choice TBH. The lads doing well at school so theres no problems there. Its all target driven stuff thats lost touch with reality. A couple of teacher friends think its a load of bull too, all its doing is alienating parents.

It’s just arse covering, they don’t really mind.

When my daughter is old enough to go to school, I fully intend to take holidays in term time, no way am I going to pay twice as much for holidays.

I will be up to us to make sur that her scholing doesn’t suffer. If the government want to contribute to the price of holidays, fair enough…

Loddrik, we’ve always taken holidays with our other children as close to the school holidays as possible. You are spot on about the cost. As soon as you hit the schools holiday period the price goes through the roof. In infant and primary school the teachers were not bothered about missing school TBH i think they really did understand how important it is for kids to get away with their parents. So why should it change when they get older?

[list]Mate it’s your family, you’re the father/parents: you decide what’s right for your kids (as long as you are a right thinking individual).

Don’t this pathetic New Labour Nanny State tell you how to run your family.

BTW I’ve just spent 3 years divorcing my wife, and I’ve got the house and kids – for their benefit.

just take him out – i’m going to do that next year!

It won’t even show up in the school stats anyway. It’s a little advertised fact that school attendance figures collected for the census and publication only actually count the autumn and spring terms.

With more than a half term left before you go you could ask for the schemes of work for the missing week when they’ll be starting fresh topics and get him to read ahead.

I’m chair of governors at our local primary and we’ve been under intense pressure from LA to set a policy of not authorising any holiday in term time. Since we think it wouldn’t actually change any family’s behaviour and would just put barriers between school and parent we keep telling them to butt out. Our attendance figures, like all schools are not dominated by the odd week here and there, but by a handful of families who lead chaotic lives and subsequently have very significant lateness and attendance problems, not to mention neglect, physical and sexual abuse. Government are attempting to mask the failure to successfully address these family issues by using the blunt instrument of denying holiday authorisation for all in order to hold the figures up.

If you are a decent parent doing what you think is best for your child, enjoy the holiday, and don’t avoid Disney, just seeing the intense workrate and attention to detail those guys put in to the place day after day was an education to me, and the big wavepool at Typhoon lagoon is an absolute must anyway.

i wouldn’t take my kids out of school, just for a week on some tacky package holiday. i know it costs more so we work a little harder or cut back on non essentials so we have enough money to take our kids to see the world, and not compromise their education.

Very few things compromise the education of a child more than making the parents pissed off and disengaged with the school, it has to be a working partnership if you want the best possible education.

Wow, you are amazing, your kids are so lucky to have a parent like to, you put the rest of us to shame 🙄

Hell, I reckon they could spell sanctimonious before they could walk…

Wow, you are amazing, your kids are so lucky to have a parent like to, you put the rest of us to shame

true

Hell, I reckon they could spell sanctimonious before they could walk…

false

wow 3 weeks in Florida – you must really love them

IIRC schools are now obliged to tell their LA, it is no longer at the schools discretion.

That’s what we have been informed of in writing at our sons school.

so the school has times when your child is expected to attend and times when they are not. How about working within these dates – yes it does cost more but that is because they are peak times.
See how you get on with work if you just say sorry I know I cant take this week off but I’m just going to anyway. Maybe the teachers could take holiday when they wanted too.

There’s rules around this here too (Aus).
With two kids I’ll be taking them out during school term time or not as I see fit. I certainly won’t be listening to some trumped up policy that makes a govener happy.
That aside, they’ll not be off to see Mickey Rat either, but each to thier own and I suppose if it’s been ‘earned’ through exceptional kiddie duties etc etc.

just don’t get arsey with taeching staff when son/daughter has missed work and then you expect the teaching staff to sort it out – I know you won’t but we have that all the time. One of my Year 11s was off on hols during key coursework time and we were expected to pick up the pieces.

sympathy on both sides here – as long as it’s not regular and too long I can sympathise. On the other hand; bleating about the extra costs of holidays out of term time is pretty futile. Kids are expensive and you knew before hand this would happen. Accept it, move on.

Now an honest question – why can’t different areas of the country take holidays at different times. Maybe a 4 term system? And start to break down this overdemand / price hike scenario?

it’s a week out of school! hardly going to make a huge impact now is it and anyway, if a kids off sick for a week they have to catch up so what’s the difference?

It’s only one week, not likely to cause issues. But the reason these guidelines etc were brought in is because parents were doing it sometimes twice a year, mid term, no-where near the school hols (because it was cheaper) and it was damaging kids education, and the schools were having to deal with the bad side of that later. At 12 a week off is a lot of time missed in a term, but then if kid is half decent he’ll catch up. The problem is they’re taught so damn little already that its a large percentage 🙂

Bit of a difficult one this. Completing an education that will be needed to survive in the modern world, or a week eating junk food in Disneyland aka Capital of the Obese.

Hard call that.

😀 got to admit, Jengas point is a good one 🙂

I’d rather go to school than spend a 3rd week in Florida.

I’d rather not spend even a week in Florida.

It doesn’t seem to affect things too much when a couple of flakes of snow fall & they close the school

I used to have a job that didn’t allow any holiday during schools holidays so we used to take ours for a week on the last week of the summer term – they always refused [as above] so in the end I just stopped telling them as it was obviously not a real consideration of our request.

I had a moan about the cost of holidaying withing school holidays, and that IMO the travel companies were being very cinical. For that I was shot down in flames with the supply and demand arguement thrown at me.
Thing is you guys throw around the word cheap, but we are possibly talking thousands.
You draw a paralel with estate agents and the arguement soon changes.

aleigh – Member
just take him out – i’m going to do that next year!

Best check with twosheds first eh Aleigh?

It’s your decision at the end of the day, but I have no sympathy for people whining about this.

When we had kids, we knew that we would only be going on holiday in the school holidays, when it was busy and expensive. It was kind of one of those things we knew would happen when we decided to have kids. Quite looking forward to a cottage in Northumberland at Easter.

While there is an argument that some foreign travel can be more educational than a week at school (and I have my doubts that a week in Florida falls into that category) I would suggest that showing the importance of school and education by not taking them out for a week in the sun may be a more important lesson for them.

IMHO

Can’t stand sanctimonious wnakers (deliberate mis-spelling) like Mr_Krabbs.

Exactly the kind of person who supports our totalitarian state and ruins the place for the rest of us.

Tw*t

Take ’em on holiday and have done with – they’ll probably learn more on holiday anyway given the state of education in this country…

Do it and enjoy the time, Florida is a great place for 12 year olds.
A weeks schooling can easily be recouped if you are a half caring parent (I assume that if you were a beligerent parent you would not have started this thread). If going to Florida, Universal studios is better than Disney. And Animal Kingdom is the best of the disney parks. Busch Gardens is also great and has the best rollercoasters in the whole of Florida.
Also make a diversion to the “Cheescake factory” the food is amazing.
We were there two years ago and had a fab time.

I feel for anyone with children facing upto the dilemma of being shafted for the high cost of holidays in half term etc. TBH though 3weeks is a long holiday. If it was in somewhere like Peru, Bhutan, Beijing etc the school might be more inclined to say ‘ok’ as its an educational experience in part.

If we looked at it from a schools perspective- how many teachers etc have to combat this sort of thing all the time from different parents?

There is a difference between supporting a policy designed to support the education of children, and supporting all the other nanny state guff that this stupid government has brought in.

But as I said before, if you don’t like having to pay extra for holidays in the school holiday periods then you should have thought about it before you had them. Don’t expect sympathy.

Anyway, this sanctomonious wnaker had better get on with some work.

As a teacher here is my 2 penny worth

1. Taking kids off school give out the wrong signals about the importance of education.
2. Dont come to me (or whoever) and complain when you kids is messing around in lessons and not achieving because he’s no longer bothered ( and thinks his parents have the same attitude)
3. Dont come to me (or whoever) and complain when your kid underperforms in his GCSE’s.
4. What is the educational value of seeing Micky Mouse?
I personally think it is very selfish of parents to take kids outof school so THEY can save money on holidays.

I had a moan about the cost of holidaying withing school holidays, and that IMO the travel companies were being very cinical. For that I was shot down in flames with the supply and demand arguement thrown at me.

Quite – the school holiday price is the real price and it’s simply discounted at other times rather than the other way round!