although I undertand what Mr Gove is trying to do, like most politicians he has got the wrong end of the stick & punishing the wrong parents. Truancy maybe a big problem, but it is not children from "normal" households missing a few days at the end of a school term that is the real problem, but "feral" kids missing whole weeks & months of their education.
Last year I asked if I could take my 2 children of school age to centre parcs during term time (missing jut 4 days as they were only starting back on the tuesday) and was told categorically no............i did it anyway as the price was double otherwise and any fine (I was told the council could fine me £100) would be worth taking. I don't like doing this but I have very few options due to my family circumstances. Also I will continue to take this stance , especially when the school then decides to take an inset day (teacher training days that used to be called Baker days) on the first day back from a holiday (like today). YTeachers get 12 (TWELVE) weeks holiday a year, compared to most people's 4 or 5. I understand that some of the days they are working, but it is still hell of amount of time off. A lot of parents have to work during school time and so arranging child care is a problem..........to add another day when the teachers have just had a week off is adding insult to injury & so if the school persists in taking this stancei will persist in taking mine.
Golf,
How on earth can it help you cover the twelve weeks holiday when you use some of yours taking them away during term time?
I don't approve of taking kids out during term time but then I'm more concerned with my son's education than I am In showing the school how important I am and that I can do what I want.
With some of the comments on here is it no surprise to me that we seem to have so many under 24 year olds that are struggling to get jobs. For goodness sake don't they get enough hoidays for you all to choose a couple of weeks. And if you can't afford a holiday when the the schools are shut then don't go. Talk about having to have everything.
Last year my brother-in-law got married in Greece and in order to prevent my son missing any time off school my wife went on her own for a week.
If you don't want to make the sacrifices don't have the children in the first place!
50 quids probably worth it given the apparent savings this smacks of tory hot air to me rousing the blue rinse brigade etc i am pretty sure Heads are capable of exercising disceretion
@Shrew - I agree, I took a month off a few years ago to go on a visit of most of Asia and Australia; I'd say it benefited me far more than the last 2 weeks that schools spend playing films during lessons. It helped broaden my knowledge and understanding of cultural differences and taught me a hell of a lot more about the world than any Geography lesson.
Load of rubbish with politicians that have little idea of the real world. The two reasons I can see for this are 1,Punish the decent parents who wont make a big fuss about it and they can bring down their truancy numbers.Instead of the parents who let their kids stay away for weeks on end. 2,The rip off Britain culture where a huge mark up on holidays in school holiday time seems acceptable, that mean little to the overpaid expense fiddling crooks that inhabit the corridors of Westminster who can afford any holiday they want during their huge Summer Recess. Apart from during external exam years in my experience not a huge amount of work is done in the final weeks of the Summer term so what is the problem with the politicians? More Nanny state? Statistic "massaging"?
@Shrew - I agree, I took a month off a few years ago to go on a visit of most of Asia and Australia; I'd say it benefited me far more than the last 2 weeks that schools spend playing films during lessons. It helped broaden my knowledge and understanding of cultural differences and taught me a hell of a lot more about the world than any Geography lesson.
Would you not have learned all of that if you'd gone in the school holiday?
50 quids probably worth it given the apparent savings this smacks of tory hot air to me rousing the blue rinse brigade etc i am pretty sure Heads are capable of exercising disceretion
Exercising diseceretion - is that some sort of bodily fluid..........:)?
At the school I teach at, we treat it on a case by case basis and it seems to work fine. Where students do miss school, they have work set for them and they and their parents know that they have to catch up. Most of the trips that do get granted tend to be for family/religious reasons, not just jollies to Benidorm. Ironic that Gove bleats on about handing power back to schools but doesn't seem to credit us with the smallest amount of common sense...
By the way, Inset/Baker days aren't additional to the holidays for us teachers - they're training days that replaced days that used to be holidays (so kids spend no less time in school because of them). Robbo on the Wing - some schools do lump inset days together in a single week, though as we do focused training on these days (at least in my school), I definitely gain more from having them spread over the year so I have time to implement the ideas I pick up, see how they work, come back to them on future training days etc.
@kings hill addick - The trip in itself lasted the entire summer holiday, I returned with only a Sunday to get over my jet lag. Its not the people who infrequently take a week or so off at a reasonable time period who should get the backlash of this petty ban, the real focus should go on truants; I still had a 97% attendance record by the end of the year so the government has got the wrong idea in this.
What gets me is these inset days that schools take. For those who aren't aware they are a number of days that the school closes (outside official holiday dates). These are not always readily available at the start of term. If the school deem them necessary, then why not take them all at once (ideally after a bank holiday). This would allow you to take your child away at an off peak period, whilst schooling disruption is kept to a minimum.
These days were added on to the school year by Kenneth Baker, an Education minister under Margaret Thatcher. Previously they had been school holidays! What is happening now in Secondary schools is surreal though. Under pressure to produce Examination results, teachers are pressured to put on catch-up sessions after school, and complain to parents if their child doesn't attend. Some of these sessions are for coursework in 'controlled conditions' which exam boards now insist on. The exam boards are not brave enough to call them exams, which in effect they are (just not fixed to an exam timetable)...it certainly isn't coursework in the understood sense. Now you have kids not bothering much in lessons, and saying they will do it in 'catchup' which they then don't attend, or attend haphazardly. Or the kids complain that all the subjects have after school catch up at the same time, on the same days, and want it 'timetabled' better. Parents sometimes contact schools, apologising that their son or daughter can't attend one session in a particular subject because they have to attend another one (or two, or three). The actual school day, or school week is disintergrating for teachers, students and their families. At English GCSE there has to be so many hours of 'controlled conditions coursework' that lots of teaching simply does not happen.
I have taken my daughter out of school at this moment in time, to attend a family wedding in Australia, two weeks out of school and the half term week. She is in year seven, we wrote to the school telling that we were going, they didn't approve the trip, however didn't fine us for taking her out. We wrote a letter to each of her teachers asking for homework for her to do whilst she was away from school.
The thing is that supply and demand during the school holidays allows firms to charge what they want, they isn't a lot parents can do, other than take their kids out during term time.
To Kings Hill; my children are aged 8, 7 & 5..............I don't think missing a couple of days of them doing their times table or spellings will do them much harm. I certainly wont do it if they were 14 or 15 and missing work needed for exams etc............
To Sao{auloAddick : can't you do the training during the week you are off - or do you need 12 weeks holiday a year ??
I have taken my daughter out of school at this moment in time, to attend a family wedding in Australia, two weeks out of school and the half term week. She is in year seven, we wrote to the school telling that we were going, they didn't approve the trip, however didn't fine us for taking her out. We wrote a letter to each of her teachers asking for homework for her to do whilst she was away from school.
The thing is that supply and demand during the school holidays allows firms to charge what they want, they isn't a lot parents can do, other than take their kids out during term time.
Or not go on such an expensive holiday.
It's no wonder that the country is in such a financial mess.
They should fine them and then pay the money to the dogsbody teachers who will be expected to give up even more of their almost non-existent spare time to help the little darlings catch up on what they have missed when they were on their 'educational' trip to Benidorm, or wherever. Even better, take them out of school, then you get to keep them all day, every day and they aren't allowed to come back. Problem solved!
There are the same number of teaching days as a decade ago, though Seth. If by 'catchup' you mean revision sessions, then these have always taken place. There may be some 'catchup lessons' for lower ability students who struggle in class - this is a good step forward from the old days. Controlled assessment will sometimes, and it is relatively unusual, be undertaken outside classroom hours. This will be if the students timetables are complicated and they need to be withdrawn from a number of option subjects to take, say a History CA. The initial reason for controlled assessment (CA) was not an insitance from exam boards, but rather from parents who felt that the coursework they replace was too often being done by parents and not students. The parents who played by the rules felt they were being cheated by the parents who helped their children, This got out of hand and the sensible alternative was controlled assessment. The second reason was again from parents whose children didnt flourish under written exam papers. CA can be brilliant for children who are good at manipulating data - a skill required in real world workplaces. Frankly 2 and a half hour exams (without access to computers) many of us were used to are skills no longer required in todays world. How often would this skill be needed in any office? CA is far more realistic. you say a lot of teaching doesnt get done during controlle assessment but this is somewhat disingenious - teaching doesnt get done during exams, and usually CA.
Golf - its not as simple as you state, as noted in my earlier post.
To Sao{auloAddick : can't you do the training during the week you are off - or do you need 12 weeks holiday a year ??
The training is during the time we are "off". Inset days replaced holidays, not teaching days.
And yep I'll stand by my 12 weeks holiday - during term time I work my nuts off! I can't say this for every school, but in my school teachers and students are absolutely fried by the end of term. We do benefit from the time off to recharge batteries, mark books, plan lessons, produce resources etc.
And before anyone says anything about pampered public sector workers I worked in the private sector for over 10 years before I became a teacher, doing a job that involving long hours and plenty of stress, so I have something to compare it to - the hardest I've ever worked is the last few years as a teacher, holidays or not.
I have taken my daughter out of school at this moment in time, to attend a family wedding in Australia, two weeks out of school and the half term week. She is in year seven, we wrote to the school telling that we were going, they didn't approve the trip, however didn't fine us for taking her out. We wrote a letter to each of her teachers asking for homework for her to do whilst she was away from school.
The thing is that supply and demand during the school holidays allows firms to charge what they want, they isn't a lot parents can do, other than take their kids out during term time.
Or not go on such an expensive holiday.
It's no wonder that the country is in such a financial mess.
I have spent the last year working overtime to pay for it, working away at weekends, starting at 6 am during the week and sometimes after midnight. Lucky I could do it and somehow i think i've earn it. The amount I've paid in tax whilst working overtime, I don't think the mess the UK is in, is only down to me.
I didn't have a holiday last year and will not be having one during the summer.
I have taken my daughter out of school at this moment in time, to attend a family wedding in Australia, two weeks out of school and the half term week. She is in year seven, we wrote to the school telling that we were going, they didn't approve the trip, however didn't fine us for taking her out. We wrote a letter to each of her teachers asking for homework for her to do whilst she was away from school.
The thing is that supply and demand during the school holidays allows firms to charge what they want, they isn't a lot parents can do, other than take their kids out during term time.
Or not go on such an expensive holiday.
It's no wonder that the country is in such a financial mess.
KHA. I can only assume you are on a wind up. Read what he wrote.
You obviously see yourself as some sort of paragon of virtue. Unfortunately, you are utterly deluded if you really believe that by attending a family wedding in Australia Guiness Addick is contributing to the countries financial woes.
Also I will continue to take this stance , especially when the school then decides to take an inset day (teacher training days that used to be called Baker days) on the first day back from a holiday (like today). YTeachers get 12 (TWELVE) weeks holiday a year, compared to most people's 4 or 5. I understand that some of the days they are working, but it is still hell of amount of time off. A lot of parents have to work during school time and so arranging child care is a problem..........to add another day when the teachers have just had a week off is adding insult to injury & so if the school persists in taking this stancei will persist in taking mine.
Oh come on Golfie! They can't win over the timing of inset days. You whinge about the inset days being put at the end of the holidays, whereas if they'd put them as a random day in the middle of term, a load of other parents would be complaining it'd make more sense to tack them onto the end of the holidays, so they could extend the time they took away.
Personally I can understand why parents might want to take their kids away out during term time, because prices go up so much in the school holidays, but unless it's an exceptional reason (family wedding overseas etc) then I don't think it's on to take your kids out for an extended period in the middle of the school year. Even if they get given "homework" to take with them, it usually means they are behind on the stuff covered over that period, and the teacher ends up having to go over it again for their benefit later. I'd say the exception is probably the last couple of weeks of summer term when school trips and special activies are happening, but even that doesn't necessarily apply in year 10 and 12, as there may be coursework catch-up going on.
I have taken my daughter out of school at this moment in time, to attend a family wedding in Australia, two weeks out of school and the half term week. She is in year seven, we wrote to the school telling that we were going, they didn't approve the trip, however didn't fine us for taking her out. We wrote a letter to each of her teachers asking for homework for her to do whilst she was away from school.
The thing is that supply and demand during the school holidays allows firms to charge what they want, they isn't a lot parents can do, other than take their kids out during term time.
Or not go on such an expensive holiday.
It's no wonder that the country is in such a financial mess.
I have spent the last year working overtime to pay for it, working away at weekends, starting at 6 am during the week and sometimes after midnight. Lucky I could do it and somehow i think i've earn it. I didn't have a holiday last year and will not be having one during the summer.
Why are you justifying yourself? If you chose to take out a 10k loan from Wonga.com to pay for the trip it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone but yourself.
There are the same number of teaching days as a decade ago, though Seth. If by 'catchup' you mean revision sessions, then these have always taken place. There may be some 'catchup lessons' for lower ability students who struggle in class - this is a good step forward from the old days. Controlled assessment will sometimes, and it is relatively unusual, be undertaken outside classroom hours. This will be if the students timetables are complicated and they need to be withdrawn from a number of option subjects to take, say a History CA. The initial reason for controlled assessment (CA) was not an insitance from exam boards, but rather from parents who felt that the coursework they replace was too often being done by parents and not students. The parents who played by the rules felt they were being cheated by the parents who helped their children, This got out of hand and the sensible alternative was controlled assessment. The second reason was again from parents whose children didnt flourish under written exam papers. CA can be brilliant for children who are good at manipulating data - a skill required in real world workplaces. Frankly 2 and a half hour exams (without access to computers) many of us were used to are skills no longer required in todays world. How often would this skill be needed in any office? CA is far more realistic. you say a lot of teaching doesnt get done during controlle assessment but this is somewhat disingenious - teaching doesnt get done during exams, and usually CA.
Golf - its not as simple as you state, as noted in my earlier post.
There are indeed the same number of teaching days Floyd, but I don't agree with you regarding the old (voluntary) revision sessions and the controlled conditions fiasco we have now. In the past students did a bit of coursework in their own time, handed it in, and the teacher would look at it and suggest improvements in their own time, and it would go to and fro a few times like that. Now conditions have to be created in the school, either taken out of teaching time, or in after school sessions...which teachers will do unpaid. I agree that old fashioned exams leave a lot to be desired, but now we have the dogs dinner of a system. revision sessions would be sometimes for selected students who needed it, now all students have to be served by such sessions, (although if in the Easter holidays teachers will get paid for doing them). Schools have yet to develop a coherent strategy for coping with the present mess.
This is ridiculous. Imagine if this was a Labour policy. Some people on here would be screaming nanny state until they threw up their own pelvis.
Up to the parents, surely. I had a 58% attendance rate at secondary school and I went on to do A levels and go to a top 10 university. My parents took me out of school for three weeks in Year 11 to go to Asia and that was the most defining three weeks of education I ever had.
I am a teacher and a parent. I do have a lot of sympathy with parents taking children out, as the difference in cost is so huge. It's a personal choice really, even before teaching I made a decision not to take my kids out, because I wanted them to regard school as something important, and wanted to set an example with the attitude I showed towards their education. To me, their education was always more important than a holiday.
@kingshilladdick I paid £150 in early December for all 4 of us to Tenerife (flights only), to go in the summer holidays it costs £1500 (flights only) thats hardly an OTT expensive holiday! As I've said before, I have taken my girls out of school before but won't be doing this when it becomes more important to their educational needs in relation to new schools, exams, coursework etc and I don't believe any responsible adult would, so to be fined for doing this is not right. In our school you ask the governors for permission to have term time off, and one year they granted my eldest the 5 days but my youngest only 4 days, so they obviously don't look at any requests in person and just work on statistics and figures which is ridiculous.
Is there any relation between child attendance figures and the amount of money a school recieves in grants? ie if a school has a higher attendance figure would it get more money from the government?
My comment was referring to the suggestion that the only two options were to have no holiday or to take children out of school.
My comment about the state of the country was related to the implied suggestion that to have no holiday, when one couldn't be afforded during school holidays, was just not an option.
This is the same logic that many people use for things that are taken for granted now that we just did without in the 70s when I was growing up.
Sure a week out of school won't cause a recession but the insistence that we all have a foreign holiday, a new TV, a designer handbag, a new car etc. has led to massive personal debt.
If one cannot afford a holiday without taking children out of school during term time than it is my view that one shouldn't have a holiday.
If someone thinks my view is a wind up then so be it, but I believe that education is imperative. I did also mention elsewhere that I stayed home with my son while my wife went to Greece for a week to a family holiday as I don't, personally, agree with missing school. Maybe my Son's school is more agressive than others, maybe he is not as bright as other children, but if he missed a week it would be a real strain for him to catch up and that can cause long term pressures for children - some fall Behind and never catch up.
Golf, I understand what you say about times tables and spellings but if they don't learn them then when will they learn them, and what will they be missing when they do?
@kingshilladdick I paid £150 in early December for all 4 of us to Tenerife (flights only), to go in the summer holidays it costs £1500 (flights only) thats hardly an OTT expensive holiday! As I've said before, I have taken my girls out of school before but won't be doing this when it becomes more important to their educational needs in relation to new schools, exams, coursework etc and I don't believe any responsible adult would, so to be fined for doing this is not right. In our school you ask the governors for permission to have term time off, and one year they granted my eldest the 5 days but my youngest only 4 days, so they obviously don't look at any requests in person and just work on statistics and figures which is ridiculous.
Is there any relation between child attendance figures and the amount of money a school recieves in grants? ie if a school has a higher attendance figure would it get more money from the government?
To be fair you might find that some of the reason for that is that it is mild in December yet hot in the summer.
We're going to Tenerife in March and those flights were c.£500 for three of us, so I think the seasons make a difference as well as the school term times.
We would have loved a break in Tenerife in early December, and like you imply, we have free accommodation out there too, but I wouldn't have gone until school finished and then it was too close to Christmas.
We don't all have to agree on this but I just, personally, feel very strongly about it.
I'll let you in on two little secrets. (1) You can afford to miss a week's worth of Ancient Egypt and Huckleberry Finn - It really isn't going to mess you up for life.
(2) Very little of secondary education is acculumative in the sense that, if you miss one module, you will be lost on the next. A levels and degree - Certainly. GCSE? Never. Years 7, 8 & 9? Not in a million bloody years.
That was my point Kings, if we'd gone in the December Hols, the price rocketed too, as for the seasons I'm not sure but it was bloomin hot that first week of December, up in the 80s still!
Is there any relation between child attendance figures and the amount of money a school recieves in grants? ie if a school has a higher attendance figure would it get more money from the government?
Not directly, as far as I know. But attendance is a factor in a school's Ofsted rating so it might be that lower attendance = lower Ofsted rating = fewer applications to your school = less pupils = less funding.
The reason I posted this and the reason its such a fascinating policy area is that it sets a Tory government directly against some of their most ardent supporters, working-class Tories who simply and absolutely hate being told what they can/can't do by the government and are endlessly ranting against "Big Brother" and the "Nanny State."
These are the folk - and there have been several on this thread - whose attitude is "Up yours, they're my kids and I will take them out of school whenever I like," and this kind of policy from Gove runs right against that attitude.
I have great sympathy for parents getting ripped off by holiday companies but can also very much see what Gove is trying to do and admire his balls in pushing for change in this area.
It would be nice if Labour backed him up on this but depressingly they have taken the easy option of cheap political shots even though I am sure they were thinking along similar lines when they were in power.
Comments
How on earth can it help you cover the twelve weeks holiday when you use some of yours taking them away during term time?
I don't approve of taking kids out during term time but then I'm more concerned with my son's education than I am In showing the school how important I am and that I can do what I want.
With some of the comments on here is it no surprise to me that we seem to have so many under 24 year olds that are struggling to get jobs. For goodness sake don't they get enough hoidays for you all to choose a couple of weeks. And if you can't afford a holiday when the the schools are shut then don't go. Talk about having to have everything.
Last year my brother-in-law got married in Greece and in order to prevent my son missing any time off school my wife went on her own for a week.
If you don't want to make the sacrifices don't have the children in the first place!
2,The rip off Britain culture where a huge mark up on holidays in school holiday time seems acceptable, that mean little to the overpaid expense fiddling crooks that inhabit the corridors of Westminster who can afford any holiday they want during their huge Summer Recess.
Apart from during external exam years in my experience not a huge amount of work is done in the final weeks of the Summer term so what is the problem with the politicians? More Nanny state? Statistic "massaging"?
By the way, Inset/Baker days aren't additional to the holidays for us teachers - they're training days that replaced days that used to be holidays (so kids spend no less time in school because of them). Robbo on the Wing - some schools do lump inset days together in a single week, though as we do focused training on these days (at least in my school), I definitely gain more from having them spread over the year so I have time to implement the ideas I pick up, see how they work, come back to them on future training days etc.
What is happening now in Secondary schools is surreal though. Under pressure to produce Examination results, teachers are pressured to put on catch-up sessions after school, and complain to parents if their child doesn't attend. Some of these sessions are for coursework in 'controlled conditions' which exam boards now insist on. The exam boards are not brave enough to call them exams, which in effect they are (just not fixed to an exam timetable)...it certainly isn't coursework in the understood sense.
Now you have kids not bothering much in lessons, and saying they will do it in 'catchup' which they then don't attend, or attend haphazardly.
Or the kids complain that all the subjects have after school catch up at the same time, on the same days, and want it 'timetabled' better. Parents sometimes contact schools, apologising that their son or daughter can't attend one session in a particular subject because they have to attend another one (or two, or three).
The actual school day, or school week is disintergrating for teachers, students and their families. At English GCSE there has to be so many hours of 'controlled conditions coursework' that lots of teaching simply does not happen.
The thing is that supply and demand during the school holidays allows firms to charge what they want, they isn't a lot parents can do, other than take their kids out during term time.
To Sao{auloAddick : can't you do the training during the week you are off - or do you need 12 weeks holiday a year ??
It's no wonder that the country is in such a financial mess.
If by 'catchup' you mean revision sessions, then these have always taken place. There may be some 'catchup lessons' for lower ability students who struggle in class - this is a good step forward from the old days.
Controlled assessment will sometimes, and it is relatively unusual, be undertaken outside classroom hours.
This will be if the students timetables are complicated and they need to be withdrawn from a number of option subjects to take, say a History CA.
The initial reason for controlled assessment (CA) was not an insitance from exam boards, but rather from parents who felt that the coursework they replace was too often being done by parents and not students. The parents who played by the rules felt they were being cheated by the parents who helped their children, This got out of hand and the sensible alternative was controlled assessment.
The second reason was again from parents whose children didnt flourish under written exam papers. CA can be brilliant for children who are good at manipulating data - a skill required in real world workplaces. Frankly 2 and a half hour exams (without access to computers) many of us were used to are skills no longer required in todays world. How often would this skill be needed in any office? CA is far more realistic.
you say a lot of teaching doesnt get done during controlle assessment but this is somewhat disingenious - teaching doesnt get done during exams, and usually CA.
Golf - its not as simple as you state, as noted in my earlier post.
And yep I'll stand by my 12 weeks holiday - during term time I work my nuts off! I can't say this for every school, but in my school teachers and students are absolutely fried by the end of term. We do benefit from the time off to recharge batteries, mark books, plan lessons, produce resources etc.
And before anyone says anything about pampered public sector workers I worked in the private sector for over 10 years before I became a teacher, doing a job that involving long hours and plenty of stress, so I have something to compare it to - the hardest I've ever worked is the last few years as a teacher, holidays or not.
I didn't have a holiday last year and will not be having one during the summer.
You obviously see yourself as some sort of paragon of virtue. Unfortunately, you are utterly deluded if you really believe that by attending a family wedding in Australia Guiness Addick is contributing to the countries financial woes.
Personally I can understand why parents might want to take their kids away out during term time, because prices go up so much in the school holidays, but unless it's an exceptional reason (family wedding overseas etc) then I don't think it's on to take your kids out for an extended period in the middle of the school year. Even if they get given "homework" to take with them, it usually means they are behind on the stuff covered over that period, and the teacher ends up having to go over it again for their benefit later. I'd say the exception is probably the last couple of weeks of summer term when school trips and special activies are happening, but even that doesn't necessarily apply in year 10 and 12, as there may be coursework catch-up going on.
Up to the parents, surely. I had a 58% attendance rate at secondary school and I went on to do A levels and go to a top 10 university. My parents took me out of school for three weeks in Year 11 to go to Asia and that was the most defining three weeks of education I ever had.
As I've said before, I have taken my girls out of school before but won't be doing this when it becomes more important to their educational needs in relation to new schools, exams, coursework etc and I don't believe any responsible adult would, so to be fined for doing this is not right. In our school you ask the governors for permission to have term time off, and one year they granted my eldest the 5 days but my youngest only 4 days, so they obviously don't look at any requests in person and just work on statistics and figures which is ridiculous.
Is there any relation between child attendance figures and the amount of money a school recieves in grants? ie if a school has a higher attendance figure would it get more money from the government?
My comment about the state of the country was related to the implied suggestion that to have no holiday, when one couldn't be afforded during school holidays, was just not an option.
This is the same logic that many people use for things that are taken for granted now that we just did without in the 70s when I was growing up.
Sure a week out of school won't cause a recession but the insistence that we all have a foreign holiday, a new TV, a designer handbag, a new car etc. has led to massive personal debt.
If one cannot afford a holiday without taking children out of school during term time than it is my view that one shouldn't have a holiday.
If someone thinks my view is a wind up then so be it, but I believe that education is imperative. I did also mention elsewhere that I stayed home with my son while my wife went to Greece for a week to a family holiday as I don't, personally, agree with missing school. Maybe my Son's school is more agressive than others, maybe he is not as bright as other children, but if he missed a week it would be a real strain for him to catch up and that can cause long term pressures for children - some fall
Behind and never catch up.
Golf, I understand what you say about times tables and spellings but if they don't learn them then when will they learn them, and what will they be missing when they do?
We're going to Tenerife in March and those flights were c.£500 for three of us, so I think the seasons make a difference as well as the school term times.
We would have loved a break in Tenerife in early December, and like you imply, we have free accommodation out there too, but I wouldn't have gone until school finished and then it was too close to Christmas.
We don't all have to agree on this but I just, personally, feel very strongly about it.
I'll let you in on two little secrets. (1) You can afford to miss a week's worth of Ancient Egypt and Huckleberry Finn - It really isn't going to mess you up for life.
(2) Very little of secondary education is acculumative in the sense that, if you miss one module, you will be lost on the next. A levels and degree - Certainly. GCSE? Never. Years 7, 8 & 9? Not in a million bloody years.
These are the folk - and there have been several on this thread - whose attitude is "Up yours, they're my kids and I will take them out of school whenever I like," and this kind of policy from Gove runs right against that attitude.
I have great sympathy for parents getting ripped off by holiday companies but can also very much see what Gove is trying to do and admire his balls in pushing for change in this area.
It would be nice if Labour backed him up on this but depressingly they have taken the easy option of cheap political shots even though I am sure they were thinking along similar lines when they were in power.