Term Time Holidays – The Arguments Can Continue.

Where they are is not the point – on holiday, off sick, on another useless course,

Holiday? Unlikely, teachers actually have to follow the rules!

Sick? Well would you rather they came in and gave it to your kids?

On a course? I’ve been on two in the last 3 years (oooh, 2 whole days off school!) one was on how to moderate the new GCSE coursework, the other was on child protection and how to spot and deal with signs of child abuse. So both totally useless!

Anyway, whilst you lot sit at your office desk and contemplate another afternoon of IT problems, I’m sitting in the garden drinking a beer, whilst my 3 year old gambols about with the cat.

I do have to mark some books at some point though 🙁

Where they are is not the point – on holiday, off sick, on another useless course, they aren’t teaching my children and the teaching assistant or supply teacher rarely fills the gap adequately. Safe to say that every time the teacher is off my children are having their education disrupted. This happens at least once a week at primary level and many times at secondary level. Yet apparently if I interupt the magic that is the national curriculum for a personal reason then thats irresponsible

I’ve no idea what you do for a living but just imagine you are in charge of a large group of adults. You call a meeting to give them all a set of instructions. 5 minutes into giving them the instruction your phone goes off – it’s a call you have to take. You halt the meeting and tell them to talk amongst themselves for 2 minutes – not ideal but 2 minutes is lost and the meeting reconvenes with everyone having heard everything but you are going to have to talk a bit quicker to get through everything you need to say.

Now imagine 5 minutes into the meeting Dave gets a call and goes out to take it. You carry on but when Dave comes back in he wants to know what’s been said. You stop and go back and cover it quickly and everyone else shuffles their feet. Then Wendy takes a call and goes out. When she comes back you are too far into the meeting to stop again so ask your assistant to go and help Wendy. Your assistant was writing the minutes but never mind you’ll do that yourself later. Next Wayne and Terry leave together to take a conference call which is really annoying because you were just about to test everyone to see if they understood what you had been going on about. When they come back your assistant is still helping Wendy (Wendy missed the stuff you were talking about whilst she was learning the the stuff she missed when she was out of the room and she’s not the brightest- your assistant looks like she’s ready to throttle her) so can’t help Wayne and Terry so they start pissing around. Jenny joins Wayne and Terry messing about because she is easily distracted and normally your assistant would have been sat next to her but she’s still stuck with Wendy.

To summarise – they are not the same. Or even close.

^^^ BEST METAPHOR EVA 😉

maybe what primary/ secondary education needs is a modular approach.

Might be a logistical nightmare, but if your kids are falling behind at ‘history 3.1’ and maths ‘2.4’, then they repeat those ‘blocks’.

That way, you guarantee that the pupils have comprehensively mastered each subject.

Win win?

Very well put convert.

Now imagine 5 minutes into the meeting Dave gets a call and goes out to take it. You carry on but when Dave comes back in he wants to know what’s been said. He gets given the minutes to read in his own time and the everyone continues as normal.

He gets given the minutes to read in his own time and the everyone continues as normal.

But Dave can’t read too well. So you have to sit down with Dave and go through it line by line. Also he’s the anxious sort and because he was not in the meeting he didn’t get a sense of everyone else’s level of understanding and spends the next two weeks worrying that he doesn’t get it as well as everyone else.

Now imagine 5 minutes into the meeting Dave gets a call and goes out to take it. You carry on but when Dave comes back in he wants to know what’s been said. He gets given the minutes to read in his own time and the everyone continues as normal.

But what if the second half of the meeting depends on the stuff that Dave missed, but he hasn’t been able to go through the minutes yet?

What about if it’s just in the three minutes at the end where Dave and everyone else just has a laugh and watches Minions on DVD?

As with everything else, there is room for compromise and realism – particularly when it comes to primary age children. However, the fact that some parents will take the piss, or put pressure on headteachers to allow poorly timed excessive absence, means that it’s easier for the schools to be given the get-out-of-jail-free card of offering no discretion whatsoever.

Minions is more than three minutes long. Your analogy is flawed.

Bloody Dave! He’s just repeating stuff 😉

Your analogy is flawed.

I prefer ‘stretched to breaking point’. 😀

My children seem to get the answerphone message more often these days what with chromebook learning but I do take your point Convert and I agree with you in the main which is why my kids have only missed 2 days so far for ‘holiday purposes’ in 7 or 8 years of school and very little sickness luckily

But what if the second half of the meeting depends on the stuff that Dave missed, but he hasn’t been able to go through the minutes yet?

Eh? Do you know what minutes are?

What about if it’s just in the three minutes at the end where Dave and everyone else just has a laugh and watches Minions on DVD?

Quite.

My daughter was worried about being pulled out of school for the four days before half term because she’d miss the Valentine’s Day activities (drawing love potions and hearts, dancing and movies).

I’m pretty sure it hasn’t jeopardised her degree prospects too badly 😆

Eh? Do you know what minutes are?

Yes. Do you know what my point was?

No idea.

It was that a kid may not have time to catch up before new stuff is taught that builds on the missed stuff. So it may cause knock on problems for quite a while.

Just like any kid who misses their homework, even those with 100% attendance.

Just like any kid who misses their homework, even those with 100% attendance.

Remarkably little homework is covering new material – most is consolidation and reinforcement.

So giving kids a little extra to catch up will cause no issues.

So giving kids a little extra to catch up entire new concepts they missed in class to do at home will cause no issues.

Of course not 😉

Entrire new. 😆

Entrire new. 😆

Ummm, checks spelling…nope that’s not the cause of Drac’s mirth……’entire’ instead of ‘entirely’ might be that……maybe he doubts ‘entire’ new concepts exist……still not sure.

Go on give us a clue, what’s funny?

Oooops!

I was on holiday when we learnt how to spell entire.

Funny that you think it’s something so entirely that it can’t be caught up on during evenings and weekends.

It’s precisely the point, because as already pointed out, if they’re sick you presumably don’t want them going in and giving the bugs to 28 kids – and kids almost all have some time off sick, which is normal (I tried to send my son in, but school sent him home twice this term!) Courses tend to be kind of useful things. Neither equate at all to taking your kids out for holidays.

I’m tempted to call BS on your once a week claim – except that my kids have both had their main teacher have one day off a week every week. The thing is though, one was because he was the deputy head and covered for the head one day a week, the other was a NQT and one day a week on development. Though in both cases there was a regular scheduled replacement teacher, both very good teachers who my kids liked. So BS.

Took mine out for 2 weeks in December so we could have Xmas with my family in Australia. I accept that it’s a bit selfish and would have paid the fine had there been one.

Mmmm 4 pages in and nobody has mentioned that this would be less of a problem if teachers took fewer holidays. Teachers should get similar amount of holidays to other professions – say 8 weeks including public holidays. Kids should have to spend 32 weeks in core time and then have 8 additional weeks to attend in the remaining 12 weeks the staff are in. Everyone then gets 4 floating weeks – simples.

Alternatively those who can’t take time off when they need to fit in with school hols could consider their career choices.

Alternatively those who can’t take time off when they need to fit in with school hols could consider their career choices.

Yeah as it’s that simple.

I expect trolls get holidays whenever they like

Yeah as it’s that simple.

It may not be simple, but it may be necessary.

Alternatively those who can’t take time off when they need to fit in with school hols could consider their career choices.

Excellent – so no one with kids can work in the NHS, fire service, police, military, hospitality, etc etc etc?

What could possibly go wrong?

Mmmm 4 pages in and nobody has mentioned that this would be less of a problem if teachers took fewer holidays. Teachers should get similar amount of holidays to other professions – say 8 weeks including public holidays. Kids should have to spend 32 weeks in core time and then have 8 additional weeks to attend in the remaining 12 weeks the staff are in. Everyone then gets 4 floating weeks – simples.

Genius.

3 months a year where every class has on average two thirds of the group in. So a few too many for 1-2-1 tutorials but not enough to introduce any new material. The kids in are selected not by the material they need/want to cover or by ability but by where they were going on holiday.

Why has no one come up with this idea before? Can’t fathom it. You need to take it the education authorities – they’ll be made up.

Excellent – so no one with kids can work in the NHS, fire service, police, military, hospitality, etc etc etc?

So no one who works in any of those can take time off in school holidays?

Excellent – so no one with kids can work in the NHS, fire service, police, military, hospitality, etc etc etc?

Or, ironically, teaching.

So no one who works in any of those can take time off in school holidays?

Keep trying.

footflaps – Member
He’s fighting against the wrong people – he should argue that the holiday companys are ripping us off on non term bookings.
You’re not being ripped off. No holiday company could have enough capacity to cope with all the demand in school holidays and not go bust because their planes / hotels are 90% empty the rest of the year. So, they all (sensibly) ration supply by raising prices at times when demand exceeds supply.

It’s basic economics.

POSTED 8 HOURS AGO #

They do? How come Menorca and my flight to/from in non term time are rammed then?

Keep trying

Asking the rhetorical questions?

oll

They do? How come Menorca and my flight to/from in non term time are rammed then?

Because they are selling the tickets off at a loss (carefully balanced to get the planes as full as possible for the highest price they can get away with – but still at a loss) so they can get folk over to the location to spend their money in the bars/on trips etc. As I said previously low season is about damage limitation for the big operators.