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Term-Time Holiday

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Bazile | 12:04 Tue 02nd Feb 2016 | News
13 Answers
What's your views on this issue ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-35469699

Parents will say that the holiday companies increase the costs of their holidays deliberately , in the school holiday period , because they have got a captive audience .

( In this particular case it is not clear if this father did it purely because of the financial costs )

The companies will argue that they have to make a profit on their operations , and would not do so if they did not raise their prices during the school holidays .

'Little' Miss Bazile's are not so little now - but if i recall , i think we took them on holiday at least once , during term time .

We didn't get fined - i don't think that the rules were as rigoursly enforced , as now .

What's your views - have you taken your kids on holiday during term
time ?
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Yep. Every holiday they've been on has been term time. Always approved though.

Each case should be judged separably. My son has has 2 years of 100% attendance. He'll go to school sick rather than miss a day, whereas his mate misses school because she doesn't like getting up in the mornings.

Tackle the latter....
I am more concerned about children at secondary school being taken for holidays in term time than I am primary/junior children. Once at secondary school education becomes time-dependent for many subjects ie, you need to know what you learned last week in order to understand this week's lessons, so taking children away can be detrimental to their education.
It depends where they are in their education. Primary school age we often shaved a few days off the last week of summer Term for a holiday -I mean what do 8 year olds do the last week of summer term? have sports day and play snakes and ladders. This year youngest is in year 11 and no way would I take him out of school for a holiday in term time.
Never would we do that.
Yes holiday companies put their prices up but it's not an excuse I'm afraid
Prices rise when demand does, I don't like it but it's economics I'm afraid
How would you feel if teachers took their holidays during term time?
I am in broad agreement with the previous posters - it is relevant to consider the age of the children, and the timing of the holiday.

The present Mrs Hughes has made her career in education, so all our holidays were taken in school holiday time, we stumped up and smiled.

The rule becomes important for example, for Indian and Pakistani children who are often taken out of school to visit relatives for up to six months at a time and come back not only way behind their classmates, but having to re-learn English all over again.

As far as this gentleman is concerned, it does appear he is going to pay a heavy price for what he believes to be right - raising £2,000 out of a potential £25,000 legal bill suggests that he is not getting a huge amount of sympathy for his position.
The objections by schools are a lot more to do with keeping up to the targets for attendance. Schools have a requirement to achieve an attendance level of 96% or they lose places in the league tables. A holiday absence would drop the schools attendance record so that they dropped places in the league table, in some cases this could mean the school had it's budget cut!
There was a story a day or two ago where a headmaster was criticised by doctors for telling parents to send their kids to school with their medicine with them if they were ill. This was because the school was 0.5% behind in in it's attendance record and he did not want to lose a place in the league table.
MargoTester
//How would you feel if teachers took their holidays during term time?//

I am afraid they do Margo and not just the odd one :-(




http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-17192157

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-34730214
Eddie that's a case of right course of action for the wrong reason
Retro - well that's three cases, all Head Teachers! My son asked for one day, a Friday, to be best man at his best friend's wedding which had been arranged before he started teaching. He was told grudgingly that he could take it without pay, which was fine by him. Perhaps one rule for Head's....
There was a spokesman for one of the holiday companies on 5Live recently discusing this. He stated that the price of a holiday package during school holidays was the true cost of the holiday and that they were heavily discounted at other times of the year to sell them... hmmmm!
Never took mine0 out, mind when you are stumping 12Gs a year (and that was a while ago now) it sharpens the mind to priorities.

There were the school trips to France, Switzerland etc though (not in the 12 G !)

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