Apparently Lancashire County Council are increasing the fines for taking children out of school during term time to £1000. (Or perhaps by £1000, it's a poor article). --------- https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/ukne...y-during-term-time/ar-BBSuKFY?ocid=spartandhp Lancashire County Council has warned parents that they could be fined up to £1,000 if they take their children out of school to go on holiday. Letters were sent out last week in the county notifying families about the steep penalty for those who go against the rules and take pupils on cheap holidays during term time. Tory-controlled Lancashire has issued more term-time holiday penalty notices than almost any other council, according to the Sunday Times. The new scheme which is planned could see a family with two children at the same school receiving a £4,000 fine. Elsewhere in the country, parents are currently given a fixed penalty of £120 per child - ten times less than what the local council are proposing. New system However, parents at Balladen Community Primary School, Rossendale, were sent a stern warning letter last week by the school's headteacher, Sara Richardson. It said: “Lancashire County Council is currently trialling a new system for dealing with unauthorised holidays and breaks during term time. This involves an increase in the financial penalty to parents of up to £1,000 per parent per child. ------------------ Now I understand the bit about the importance of educating children but isn't this just a bit one sided? For example what about when the Staff go on strike? Here it's the teachers, rather than the parents, who are withholding education from the children. Any punishment there? NO. Why isn't there a level playing field with an equal; fine, payable to parents, when The School fails to provide an education. Any chance of this happening? After all it would be fair. The only good reason for this not applying would be if the aim of these fines is to generate income and had nothing to do with educating children? PS I'm in a cynical mood today.
The fines are a disgrace introduced to make money for local government and nothing else. If a child is in GCSE year or leading up to that then I understand the "no holidays during school" but the government needs to put some sort of limit on the price for holidays during the school holiday times. I am going to a caravan park in the last week of the holidays (starting on the bank holiday monday) - because I officially return on the first day of term (even though neither of my kids go back until the Wednesday) the holiday is £1000 cheaper than if I go 3 days earlier (and that's to a UK caravan park) Abroad holidays are even worse. My friend took his daughter out of school a week before the end of term. Paid £150 in council fines - save £4000 on his summer holiday. You're right about the strikes too - who pays for me to be off work if the schools are on strike? Certainly not the schools or the government? If the government want people to take their kids away outside of school terms, then put a levy on the travel companies to ensure a fair deal for those who can't afford the extra thousands of pounds to go. My wife works in a school so I have literally no choice but to have holidays out of term time (and I am doing OK for myself financially and can afford it but it annoys the hell out of me that travel companies can offer the same holiday to 2 familes a week apart for thousands of pounds in difference!)
You can take kids out of school in term time at the headteacher's discretion. At primary level anyway. Particularly if you can demonstrate that it contributes to their education. Its only unauthorised absences that receive a fine. As I understand it, the school is penalised in some way for any unauthorised absences (And probably counts against their OFSTED rating) and the fine is intended to act as a deterrent rather than to make money. As a parent, the system is irritating. However, schools and teachers are under ever increasing pressure and parents are increasingly unhelpful.
Get at the travel companies who put people in this situation But that is far too difficult isn't it.........so lets just get at joe public again I don't have kids, but I feel the pain of people who do have kids when they are placed in this situation
A £1000 fine is massively steep but this is another example of a news story looking for an angle in order to provoke criticism without explaining the situation in full.
Looks like they're trying to make it look cheaper to book holidays out of term time so kids don't miss any school. I see what they're trying to do and it's not about making them money. Unfortunately in hard times they should be fighting for the people to try and make peak time family holidays cheaper. The result of all this means many working class children will never get to experience the joys of a holiday away. Sent from my Moto G (5) using Tapatalk
You've got it mostly there mate. It's all at the discretion of the head-teacher and in my experience if we have kids with great attendance who ask well in advance and with good reason then it's allowed whereas if a pupil has poor attendance anyway it will not be allowed. One of the issues then is the perception of what "good attendance" is. Parents will often comment about 90% being good even though in reality that is 9 out of 10 days, so one day off a fortnight! As a school general attedance rates of less than 96% can trigger an OFSTED inspection and more than a certain percentage of pupils failing to hit 93% can result in a fine so we don't have a huge choice but to take it seriously. Sadly it regularly the pupils who you do not want taking time out who are asking for it - not always of course!! - and what is the number one factor in what grades a pupil recieves at GCSE and A-Level? Yup, attendance. I haven't got the exact data to hand but could dig it out, it is along the lines of 'whilst around 60 percent of the country get 5 GCSE's including maths and english this drops to 20 percent for pupils with less then 90% attendance and 5 percent for pupils with less than 80 percent attendance". There's also the ethos. I'm a teacher so I'm hugely biased of course (and get the whole issue with striking, which I've never done myself, but i wouldn't like to think we were barred from ever striking - we have a teacher shortage crisis which is growing by the year as it is!) but I also wouldn't want to take my children out during term time as to me it sends the message that there's something more important than attending school. The financial difference is scandalous though and it does pain me when i know I'm paying many hundreds of pounds more for the same holiday as someone else did the week earlier. The solution for me would be more staggered holidays throughout the country to be honest and putting pressure on the capitalist part of the system. ps. I do always feel sorry for the parents who ask in advance and are refused who must think to themselves "I wish I'd just waited until the day and rang in sick". I do think that would be setting a pretty damaging example for their kids though of how to handle responsibilities.
I just wish this could be resolved . It’s on the news 2 or 3 times every year - same problem , no progress in getting it sorted. I think it’s down to kids ability and desire to do well . Has anyone ever said “ I dicn’t get to uni , or my life potential fell away , I ended up with a rubbish job “. — because I had 2 weeks off school when I was in hospital ? If they are willing they’ll catch up , if they can’t be bothered then 7 days a week won’t help them . So my answer is allow every child 2 weeks a year ( not compulsory) and let the parents decide wether it will screw up their child’s life on not
I get the idea Gelder but the issue is that the parents who don't care about their kids education or who like to use their older kids as basically free childcare for their younger ones (and there are many of these!!) would take the 2 weeks and try to take even more. These are the disadvantaged kids who need the social mobility that a rounded education grants them more than anyone else. The middle class kids, whose parents can afford to pay for holidays out of term time, who are already doing better academically will just pull further ahead. EDIT: Sorry i forgot to mention - you are 100% correct about the motivation point though. This comes partly from the kids and partly from the parents. I have a pupil who missed 3 months in year 10 (last year for her) in hospital and her mother emailed me every 2-3 days for updated work. The pupil is doing fine, a little behind where she would have been but not much, it probably will not affect her grade at all. Being in school isn't the "be all and end all" but it is almost certainly the single best indicator as to whether the parents value education.
I'm a parent and the Mrs is a teacher (primary), so I can see it from both sides of the argument. Have literally just booked a holiday this afternoon (out of term time obviously) and had to spend ages hunting around for a deal. What annoys me about all of this though is people bleating on about their rights to take their kids on holiday. What about the rights of teachers to be allowed to do their jobs to the best of their ability? It seems to me (and I'll check the accuracy of my assumption with the wife later) that when a teacher is expected to get a certain proportion of a class to national average standard, it must be very frustrating when kids are missing crucial parts of the curriculum and have to be helped to catch up later. There is enough pressure on teachers as it is. It's the holiday companies who take the opportunity to milk parents dry that should be taken to task. Not the schools, teachers, or education authorities who are trying to provide a service to the general public.
To take me and the bairn away to Jamaica, it's just over 2 and a half grand more expensive to do it in school time. This grand fine still isn't a deterrent, because even if I had to pay the maximum fine, I'd have still saved money. Good point about the teachers striking, I was going mad about that over my £120 fine for the last time I took the bairn away. The teacher was talking to me with a straight face about how nothing is more important than a childs education. The teacher had just returned from a strike and my daughter missed out on her education. As far as I'm aware that teacher was never fined.
My daughter learn't nothing at school the 2 weeks before Christmas as she won't before Easter and Summer. Another example of this shambolic Country and ministers running departments. It is so easy to be a rebel these days as the establishment and government has made it easier to hate through incompetence and people not fit to run a bath let alone governing our Country and local authorities..
To To be honest I don’t think parents do much to help themselves with everything like face book, twitter etc just don’t take your kids away for 1 years holiday then see what the price would be the next year.
Happened to me about 15 years ago. The headmaster (Thornhill school) said I will fine you £100. Threw the money at him and said I'm still saving £700 going 1 week before blackberry week and half term to Florida. Told him to put the money to good use and ensure it went on something for the kids. To be fair he handed me the money back stating my son was never off (had actually won an award the year before for 100% attendance) and to enjoy our hols
My daughter in-law got called in to get fined £60 for time off and she said it should be £120 because he had another day off and when the deputy head looked it was the day she was on strike went as red as a beetroot and didn’t take it any further
In fairness they were taken out of the holiday allowance back in the 80's. The government unilaterally changed the contractual terms to make teachers at the time work an extra week for no extra pay. They're just training days, some of mandatory by the state (safeguarding is a statutory requirement for anyone working with minors for instance) but half of it is a total waste of time. 2-3 days worth of paperwork as it's a requirement but affects nothing at all - if you struggle with the justification of them you're not alone!
As a parent it's a pain but as a teacher there's a reason they're at the start of the year (just to try and explain as some of it actually makes sense). We get a new cohort of pupils in we've never met before and unlike when we were all at school the kids nowadays have a vast array of needs and diagnosed conditions (allergies, special educational needs, Gifted and Talented, information about homelife which in matters we need to know... the list goes on); the job is part teaching, part social working and part parenting nowadays to be honest. Anyway, there's no point being given the opportunity to learn all these things midway through the year after you've got the dyslexic kid up to spell for the class, offered a Snickers to the kid with a peanut allergy and asked the orphan what their parents do for a living (the last of which is a thing I actually did once as a trainee teacher not knowing the pupils back story, they had very recently died too, it was not a fun day after that for any of us).
