taking my 2 out of school for a week in June as getting married in Zante, school were absolutely fine about it, I've offered to do some extra work at weekends to cover what the older one (6) will miss.
Took my daughter out of school for two weeks just before Xmas to go to Florida. The school approved it, simply told them it was the only time I could get off work and was working all over Xmas (all bull). If they had refused it I would have taken her out regardless. If they'd fined me I would have told them to stick it up their arse and flatly refused to pay it. I know of two couples who have been fined sent the letter back advising that they were refusing to pay and no further action was taken.
I'm not sure this lying and breaking of the rules for your convenience is a particularly great example to your daughter for later life.
Yeah. As soon as we got back she immediately went out and blagged a post office to fuel her crack habit.
when the school stops adding an inset day (baker days for some of you) at the start of a new term, when the teachers have just had 6 weeks off then I wont take them away during school time.
you should listen to you lot - you wanted kids so deal with it ;-)
In all seriousness if you work for a small company or in a small department and most of your colleagues have kids it's impossible for you all to be off work at the same time, or during the summer weeks, so surely something has to give somewhere especially if you figure in all the partners involved and their work situation as well.
Schools should be flexible and take all circumstances into account when deciding. For example, we are going away with Golfie and our holiday starts five days before term ends meaning his kids (all under ten) will miss the last three days of the summer term. what harm will it do them missing the last three days of the school year? all we used to do then in my day was play board games etc. If the school says no then they will have to follow us down to Cornwall three days later.
Funny too that schools don't ask parents for permission when they slot in baker days, ok for kids to miss school then ain't it.
Inset days are used for training, planning the term with your assistant/ job sharing teacher and making sure everything in class is in place. Most teachers are still winding down the classroom when the holidays start and gearing up for the commencement of term about a week before.
It really doesn't matter what an inset day is for, I just can't see why the staff can't come in a day before term starts, esp the new school, year when they have just had 6 weeks off. My kids school's new School term this year start on wed 3rd sept. I bet your bottom dollar that they will make that an inset day & the term will really start on the thursday.......if they do (as they have done the previous 3 years) then we will have to organise child care on the wed, which is diabolical when they have just had 6 weeks off.
To be honest I cannot answer that. I guess that is the contract that is drawn up between the Govt. and the Union to make sure that they get what is considered a fair and reasonable amount of paid leave. As already stated on here a lot of teachers do go back to school in the holidays, I know my wife and her colleagues do. There is a lot of unpaid hours going on; they must love it suppose or just plain nuts. Anyway, would you like it if your boss said we are going to lop a day off your entitlement for training purposes. I guess you would be miffed.
Personally i think it is ridiculous. Nothing will convince me that what a 6-10yr old covers in school during one week can't be easily caught up / done in advance.
Quality family time is in my opinion more essential than a week at school.
I'm with you AFKA , the only time i've done it was for a last day of term ( when they normally do diddly anyway) when we went on a holiday because the kids grandad had recently died , and we went with their nan to the place where she would go with him on holiday.
I think if your kids are working hard that theres got to be a bit of give and take from the school.
Some parents did take the proverbial , last 2 weeks of the Summer term off to go to Florida, i guess we're all different , and some people will push harder for it than others, saying that at primary school age the last 2 weeks of school the teachers were on a big wind down , letting the kids watch videos & playing games, no wonder we're falling behind other countries it made you wonder what they learnt?
Don't get me started on kids bring homework home , it should be done at school!
To add another balance to this btw, is the Finnish education system. They are allowed to take their kids out any day, any time. They are your kids - that's the principle. They have what is widely regarded as one of the most influential education systems in the world btw. Not just because of that, of course, but worth mentioning.
Rather begs the question, why aren't we doing what they're doing? I suspect the answer would be "We can do, if you want to pay more tax".
There seems to be an implicit assumption amongst some on here that if parents briefly remove kids from school then ergo, they don't value education as much as they should.
Many of the same parents will be the ones doing extra homework with their children, taking a keen interest in their educational development and generally hammering home the importance (and joy) of learning. I know we would fit that criteria (my wife is a primary school teacher) even if we did sneak off to Tenerife a couple of days early last Xmas.
Of course there will be some (probably not the majority in my view) who will not be encouraging their children at all (and this decision would just be a part of the same mindset), but sadly their kids will likely end up on the educational scrapheap, regardless of any fines or rules regarding holiday time.
Anyhow if you'd excuse me, I need to nip over to the 'Holidays 2014' thread to find some ideas for this year.
When I was a school governor I helped write the schools policy on holidays in school time. As part of it we discovered some figures on the impact of a child's absence from school. I was surprised at how much impact one week off has on a child's attainment. I haven't got the figures to hand but it seemed clear that kids are adversely affected by such absences.
Our school view was that all requests were at the discretion of the head and then the governors, unless the child already had poor attendance in which case it was an automatic no.
Just had a quick check of my little' uns' calendar of events for 2013/14, in that time she's going to miss 5 DAYS of school due to teacher training days, this is before we even get to the subject of day strikes etc which will add more.
So what I'd like to know (for the teachers in this thread perhaps) is, possibly people might start turning this around and take action against them! i.e imposing fines on them, my girl has missed a week (confirmed) up to now, and also two strike days, 7 school days in total.
So you study say 10 subjects for GCSE and have 6 one hour lessons a day. That is thirty lessons a week so three hours per subject per week on average. If missing three hours of Communication & design, or drama or English literature or PE or geography seriously undermines your performance in that subject then maybe the teacher isn't doing that good a job in the first place.
Bet you miss more than three hours a year in each subject by teacher turning up late to class or for Christmas concerts or charity days or school play or sports day or any other day the timetable is thrown out the window.
Sorry but that is a really wrong attitude to missing school, 3 hours or even an hour can be hard to make up , because it's not just a matter of doing it when you get back as the new workload along with the old is going to make it more difficult, it might be that the pupil can't grasp part b until they have come to grips with part a, missing school meant the tuition for part a was missing, this pupil then can't move on with the rest of the class until part a has been properly explained , the teacher then has to take time out from the other 29 pupils to help this one, by the time this pupil has done part a the rest of the class has moved to part c, then part b becomes a problem because they spent to ouch time worrying about a, the parallel class has started talking about part d before that pupils class as the teacher is still busy trying to bring this one pupil up to speed. It has a knock on effect it then ultimately is not just that pupil that suffers. Also in a week the core subjects are a lot more than 3 hours, the smaller subjects are less.
But surely this all goes back to understanding the level of your child, where they are with their educational progress, making sure you take work away for them to learn before the go on holiday or to catch up on after etc etc.
This is before anyone begins to argue on the whole point of most of the curriculum anyway!
Not really, it's not just based on ability it's also not merely just work it's also tuition, you can't take that with you. You as a parent have no idea how much a child would cover at school in a particular week, each week varies. It could be that they have started a new book, a new project. It could be that your child may be excelling in maths whilst they were doing trigonometry and knows Pythagoras theory backwards, but the week they're away they start graph curves and the quadratic equation which they don't understand quite as well. A pupil that was excelling may then struggle on return. Also your child's ability is irrelevant as your child will be in classes based on ability. You also haven't considered having more than one child, surely their abilities would differ. Another thing is people say they can take work with them and do it, realistically how many children would go on holiday and do 30 hours of school work?
I'd say there is no right or wrong answer. I've missed parts of school and it didn't appear to affect me. Others it will do.
I happily pay taxes to send other peoples children to school, and wouldn't complain about it at all. It seems a bit ungrateful for the parents to withdraw the children so that they can get cheaper holidays. What's the message? Schools important little Johnny, but not as important as mummy getting two weeks in benedorm at a reasonable cost!?
Took my daughter out of school for two weeks just before Xmas to go to Florida. The school approved it, simply told them it was the only time I could get off work and was working all over Xmas (all bull). If they had refused it I would have taken her out regardless. If they'd fined me I would have told them to stick it up their arse and flatly refused to pay it. I know of two couples who have been fined sent the letter back advising that they were refusing to pay and no further action was taken.
I'm not sure this lying and breaking of the rules for your convenience is a particularly great example to your daughter for later life.
I am sorry son - do you really think Santa Claus could possibly visit every home in the world overnight? It is us, your mum and dad who put the presents down there. I am telling you this for your own good so you can excel in later life.
Just had a quick check of my little' uns' calendar of events for 2013/14, in that time she's going to miss 5 DAYS of school due to teacher training days, this is before we even get to the subject of day strikes etc which will add more.
So what I'd like to know (for the teachers in this thread perhaps) is, possibly people might start turning this around and take action against them! i.e imposing fines on them, my girl has missed a week (confirmed) up to now, and also two strike days, 7 school days in total.
Can of worms.
The staff training days are accounted for with the rostering and order of the curriculum therefore there is no scheduled school work/ lessons for those days do effectively the child's not missing anything. Just as no lessons or part of the curriculum is scheduled for the days which are classed as school holidays/ bank holidays etc. so apart from the mentioning of strikes (which I don't approve of) your argument is invalid.
I happily pay taxes to send other peoples children to school, and wouldn't complain about it at all. It seems a bit ungrateful for the parents to withdraw the children so that they can get cheaper holidays. What's the message? Schools important little Johnny, but not as important as mummy getting two weeks in benedorm at a reasonable cost!?
Im lucky in that i can take my leave pretty much any time in the year. My husband, on the other hand, is a senior nurse and he and his same-grade colleagues cannot overlap their leave so for him its not as simple.
I dont condone parents taking their children out of school for holidays but can understand why they do it. I schooled during the teachers' strikes of the 80s when it was a week strike at a time. Doesnt seem to have done me or my career any problems.
Just had a quick check of my little' uns' calendar of events for 2013/14, in that time she's going to miss 5 DAYS of school due to teacher training days, this is before we even get to the subject of day strikes etc which will add more.
So what I'd like to know (for the teachers in this thread perhaps) is, possibly people might start turning this around and take action against them! i.e imposing fines on them, my girl has missed a week (confirmed) up to now, and also two strike days, 7 school days in total.
Can of worms.
When do you expect your kids teachers to do training then to keep up-to-date with current practices, changes in curriculum etc then?
In your job, when do you do your training then? Oh yes, thats right, of course you do it after work and at weekends and during your annual leave, dont you? Course not.
(BTW, I'm not a teacher, I just lived with one for nearly 5 years)
Just had a quick check of my little' uns' calendar of events for 2013/14, in that time she's going to miss 5 DAYS of school due to teacher training days, this is before we even get to the subject of day strikes etc which will add more.
So what I'd like to know (for the teachers in this thread perhaps) is, possibly people might start turning this around and take action against them! i.e imposing fines on them, my girl has missed a week (confirmed) up to now, and also two strike days, 7 school days in total.
Can of worms.
When do you expect your kids teachers to do training then to keep up-to-date with current practices, changes in curriculum etc then?
In your job, when do you do your training then? Oh yes, thats right, of course you do it after work and at weekends and during your annual leave, dont you? Course not.
(BTW, I'm not a teacher, I just lived with one for nearly 5 years)
Perhaps they could fit it in during the 5-6 weeks summer holiday or the 2 weeks at Easter or the 2 weeks at Xmas or during the week break they get for half term?
There seems to be an implicit assumption amongst some on here that if parents briefly remove kids from school then ergo, they don't value education as much as they should.
Many of the same parents will be the ones doing extra homework with their children, taking a keen interest in their educational development and generally hammering home the importance (and joy) of learning. I know we would fit that criteria (my wife is a primary school teacher) even if we did sneak off to Tenerife a couple of days early last Xmas.
Of course there will be some (probably not the majority in my view) who will not be encouraging their children at all (and this decision would just be a part of the same mindset), but sadly their kids will likely end up on the educational scrapheap, regardless of any fines or rules regarding holiday time.
Anyhow if you'd excuse me, I need to nip over to the 'Holidays 2014' thread to find some ideas for this year.
I agree to an extent that those that csn be bothered to take their children on holiday are often the same parents that can be bothered to pay attention to their school work and home reading, usually the same ones that get them involved in extra curricular activities. But these are the same children that are likely, because their parents care so much, to excel and be successful therefore all the more reason not to fall below their potential for having a week or two less at school each year. If a child is at school for 13 years and has 2 weeks off per year (out of scheduled education) then that is half a year of schooling missed. It all mounts up in the end.
Also it is not always the case that the parents that go on holiday care about the kids education like stated above, a lot of it is making sure they get a holiday for themselves, these are the ones I think are being targeted the most with fines. Unfortunately you can't have one rule for one set of people and different for another.
I believe the Government recently relieved the head-teachers of the right to use their common sense on this issue, and moved the decision making higher up the food chain.
Surely, it's a question of communication, ensuring your kids don't miss out and not taking the piss.
Exactly, m_a_m .
I can't see ANY problems with taking children away in term time whilst they are in the Infants( apprx 4/5 to 7) and indeed in the Juniors ( 7-11) as long as it's no more than 2 weeks and the holiday does not coincide with any important test periods ( eg SATS) Ideally, said absences should be towards the end of the summer term when everything is winding down although, as with Christmas, it's important that the kids don't miss out on the last couple of days when plays, concerts etc are often staged.
Just my opinion, but we took our 2 away several times over their school years although not after they started senior school. Dialogue with their teachers ensured that reading matter was issued and a diary of each day's events was written. Travel broadens the mind, as they say , even if it's a 2 week trip to the sun. Experiences are what enriches lives & makes us rounded people whether it be visiting a wildlife park, a dormant volcano( Tenerife for example) or merely shopping in the local market where a few words of the language can be practised. In the UK too, the opportunities for learning are immense...
And finally, do the teachers have to pay the families they let down when strike action is taken ? This is often at very short notice and the impact on parents, especially those working should not be underestimated....
Exactly this. Fortunately our kids headmistress had this attitude that travel broadens the mind and we have never had a problem. But she knows us as parents and my wife ensures they do more than enough homework and write reports etc of their experiences. It makes for less expensive travel and has many other benefits. Home schooling has now become so easy with internet access. The less Government in our lives the better, but unfortunately there are now too many people who take liberties and ruin it for those not abusing the system.
Just had a quick check of my little' uns' calendar of events for 2013/14, in that time she's going to miss 5 DAYS of school due to teacher training days, this is before we even get to the subject of day strikes etc which will add more.
So what I'd like to know (for the teachers in this thread perhaps) is, possibly people might start turning this around and take action against them! i.e imposing fines on them, my girl has missed a week (confirmed) up to now, and also two strike days, 7 school days in total.
Can of worms.
When do you expect your kids teachers to do training then to keep up-to-date with current practices, changes in curriculum etc then?
In your job, when do you do your training then? Oh yes, thats right, of course you do it after work and at weekends and during your annual leave, dont you? Course not.
(BTW, I'm not a teacher, I just lived with one for nearly 5 years)
i don't get 6 weeks off in the middle of the year.
So you study say 10 subjects for GCSE and have 6 one hour lessons a day. That is thirty lessons a week so three hours per subject per week on average. If missing three hours of Communication & design, or drama or English literature or PE or geography seriously undermines your performance in that subject then maybe the teacher isn't doing that good a job in the first place.
Bet you miss more than three hours a year in each subject by teacher turning up late to class or for Christmas concerts or charity days or school play or sports day or any other day the timetable is thrown out the window.
Sorry but that is a really wrong attitude to missing school, 3 hours or even an hour can be hard to make up , because it's not just a matter of doing it when you get back as the new workload along with the old is going to make it more difficult, it might be that the pupil can't grasp part b until they have come to grips with part a, missing school meant the tuition for part a was missing, this pupil then can't move on with the rest of the class until part a has been properly explained , the teacher then has to take time out from the other 29 pupils to help this one, by the time this pupil has done part a the rest of the class has moved to part c, then part b becomes a problem because they spent to ouch time worrying about a, the parallel class has started talking about part d before that pupils class as the teacher is still busy trying to bring this one pupil up to speed. It has a knock on effect it then ultimately is not just that pupil that suffers. Also in a week the core subjects are a lot more than 3 hours, the smaller subjects are less.
But surely this all goes back to understanding the level of your child, where they are with their educational progress, making sure you take work away for them to learn before the go on holiday or to catch up on after etc etc.
This is before anyone begins to argue on the whole point of most of the curriculum anyway!
Not really, it's not just based on ability it's also not merely just work it's also tuition, you can't take that with you. You as a parent have no idea how much a child would cover at school in a particular week, each week varies. It could be that they have started a new book, a new project. It could be that your child may be excelling in maths whilst they were doing trigonometry and knows Pythagoras theory backwards, but the week they're away they start graph curves and the quadratic equation which they don't understand quite as well. A pupil that was excelling may then struggle on return. Also your child's ability is irrelevant as your child will be in classes based on ability. You also haven't considered having more than one child, surely their abilities would differ. Another thing is people say they can take work with them and do it, realistically how many children would go on holiday and do 30 hours of school work?
I'd say there is no right or wrong answer. I've missed parts of school and it didn't appear to affect me. Others it will do.
But as someone else said, one week is an ENTIRE topic in maths. Which could be worth 5/6 marks at least in a SATS paper. Which could EASILY cost them a grade. Then the school is caned by Ofsted.
Of course, you can't have known this as you aren't inside the system but as usual, it's important to see every side.
Reckon I could bring a primary school child up to speed for a lost week in maths. The school could permit the leave subject to homework being completed by a certain date. If the homework is too complicated and involves some research then this is what a responsible parent must do.
I believe the Government recently relieved the head-teachers of the right to use their common sense on this issue, and moved the decision making higher up the food chain.
Surely, it's a question of communication, ensuring your kids don't miss out and not taking the piss.
Exactly, m_a_m .
I can't see ANY problems with taking children away in term time whilst they are in the Infants( apprx 4/5 to 7) and indeed in the Juniors ( 7-11) as long as it's no more than 2 weeks and the holiday does not coincide with any important test periods ( eg SATS) Ideally, said absences should be towards the end of the summer term when everything is winding down although, as with Christmas, it's important that the kids don't miss out on the last couple of days when plays, concerts etc are often staged.
Just my opinion, but we took our 2 away several times over their school years although not after they started senior school. Dialogue with their teachers ensured that reading matter was issued and a diary of each day's events was written. Travel broadens the mind, as they say , even if it's a 2 week trip to the sun. Experiences are what enriches lives & makes us rounded people whether it be visiting a wildlife park, a dormant volcano( Tenerife for example) or merely shopping in the local market where a few words of the language can be practised. In the UK too, the opportunities for learning are immense...
And finally, do the teachers have to pay the families they let down when strike action is taken ? This is often at very short notice and the impact on parents, especially those working should not be underestimated....
Exactly this. Fortunately our kids headmistress had this attitude that travel broadens the mind and we have never had a problem. But she knows us as parents and my wife ensures they do more than enough homework and write reports etc of their experiences. It makes for less expensive travel and has many other benefits. Home schooling has now become so easy with internet access. The less Government in our lives the better, but unfortunately there are now too many people who take liberties and ruin it for those not abusing the system.
I suspect that, in most holidays pertinent to this story, it broadens the arse.
This is a very interesting debate on so many levels. I do often contemplate whether we as a society are placing far too much emphasis on achieving qualifications in order to attain well paid employment, when very often graduates cannot find such employment, whilst tradespeople such as plumbers and electricians can earn big money with hard meaningful work. Personally I have far more respect for a good hard working plumber who has set up his own business, than some rich Banker who does very little for society, or some corrupt Union boss who has been ripping off his workers for years. Everyone is now so obsessed with earning more than their neighbour, that kids are very often not seeing enough of their parents and things such as family holidays or even kicking the ball around in the park, become things of the past.
I do agree that school holidays are far too long, perhaps the numbers of teachers would reduce if the number of holidays were reduced , you'd certainly find out then which teachers thought it was their 'calling'.
Surely if kids were in school for longer they would end up doing more work at school rather than at home, therefore improving the quality of family life in the evening?
No wonder we are falling behind other countries , we just don't like change in this country.
Perhaps they could fit it in during the 5-6 weeks summer holiday or the 2 weeks at Easter or the 2 weeks at Xmas or during the week break they get for half term?
Once you take out the marking, the lesson preparation, paperwork and writing reports out of that "holiday", how much do you think is actually left? Not as much as a lot of you think.
Perhaps some of the CL teachers can enlighten us to exactly how much real holiday they get...
sorry Sadie I disagree , the whole teacher training nonsense infuriates me, The schools are closed at Easter and summer and winter and prob another one I have missed, the summer one being 6 weeks all the teacher training could be done then,
the 5 days for training are relevant as its 5 days parents are inconvenienced and required to either shell out on child care or take annual leave themselves to cover it, on top of that school teachers exercise their right to strike, yet hardly any of them in % terms then use that day to march on to local government of the houses of parliament to voice their annoyance,
the last strike I was playing golf with 2 of them whilst our wives took the kids shopping,
Schools can not have it all ways, its ridiculous to consider fining parents and sending court letters at substantial cost, when the schools themselves put the kids out of school for 5-7 days themselves in addition to holidays, to say there was no lessons planned for that day, is 5 days worth of additional education they could do and should be spreading the lessons so they include those 5 days,
Just had a quick check of my little' uns' calendar of events for 2013/14, in that time she's going to miss 5 DAYS of school due to teacher training days, this is before we even get to the subject of day strikes etc which will add more.
So what I'd like to know (for the teachers in this thread perhaps) is, possibly people might start turning this around and take action against them! i.e imposing fines on them, my girl has missed a week (confirmed) up to now, and also two strike days, 7 school days in total.
Can of worms.
When do you expect your kids teachers to do training then to keep up-to-date with current practices, changes in curriculum etc then?
In your job, when do you do your training then? Oh yes, thats right, of course you do it after work and at weekends and during your annual leave, dont you? Course not.
(BTW, I'm not a teacher, I just lived with one for nearly 5 years)
Yes actually much of the time as I work for a small organisation.
We do a limited amount of training during working hours but standards of service would undoubtedly suffer if we did it all then.
The onus is therefore on us to a great extent and the requirements of our professional bodies.
We'd better hope there isn't a flu outbreak this year as the way some people are talking our kids are going to be doomed if they have a couple of days off school
Perhaps they could fit it in during the 5-6 weeks summer holiday or the 2 weeks at Easter or the 2 weeks at Xmas or during the week break they get for half term?
Once you take out the marking, the lesson preparation, paperwork and writing reports out of that "holiday", how much do you think is actually left? Not as much as a lot of you think.
Perhaps some of the CL teachers can enlighten us to exactly how much real holiday they get...
My wife's closest friend is a head of year. She spent 4 of the 6 summer holiday weeks in Spain on holiday.
Lessons start at 9 and kids generally go home at 2.30 - 3.30 that gives them another couple of hours to start marking etc.
Many have classroom assistants these days, I know for a fact that lesson planning often gets delegated to the more capable of these.
Comments
even if they'd refused I'd have still taken them
Anyway, would you like it if your boss said we are going to lop a day off your entitlement for training purposes. I guess you would be miffed.
I think if your kids are working hard that theres got to be a bit of give and take from the school.
Some parents did take the proverbial , last 2 weeks of the Summer term off to go to Florida, i guess we're all different , and some people will push harder for it than others, saying that at primary school age the last 2 weeks of school the teachers were on a big wind down , letting the kids watch videos & playing games, no wonder we're falling behind other countries it made you wonder what they learnt?
Don't get me started on kids bring homework home , it should be done at school!
Or tests the parents knowledge at least
Many of the same parents will be the ones doing extra homework with their children, taking a keen interest in their educational development and generally hammering home the importance (and joy) of learning. I know we would fit that criteria (my wife is a primary school teacher) even if we did sneak off to Tenerife a couple of days early last Xmas.
Of course there will be some (probably not the majority in my view) who will not be encouraging their children at all (and this decision would just be a part of the same mindset), but sadly their kids will likely end up on the educational scrapheap, regardless of any fines or rules regarding holiday time.
Anyhow if you'd excuse me, I need to nip over to the 'Holidays 2014' thread to find some ideas for this year.
Our school view was that all requests were at the discretion of the head and then the governors, unless the child already had poor attendance in which case it was an automatic no.
So what I'd like to know (for the teachers in this thread perhaps) is, possibly people might start turning this around and take action against them! i.e imposing fines on them, my girl has missed a week (confirmed) up to now, and also two strike days, 7 school days in total.
Can of worms.
Not every class is split on ability either.
I dont condone parents taking their children out of school for holidays but can understand why they do it. I schooled during the teachers' strikes of the 80s when it was a week strike at a time. Doesnt seem to have done me or my career any problems.
In your job, when do you do your training then? Oh yes, thats right, of course you do it after work and at weekends and during your annual leave, dont you? Course not.
(BTW, I'm not a teacher, I just lived with one for nearly 5 years)
Also it is not always the case that the parents that go on holiday care about the kids education like stated above, a lot of it is making sure they get a holiday for themselves, these are the ones I think are being targeted the most with fines. Unfortunately you can't have one rule for one set of people and different for another.
Surely if kids were in school for longer they would end up doing more work at school rather than at home, therefore improving the quality of family life in the evening?
No wonder we are falling behind other countries , we just don't like change in this country.
Perhaps some of the CL teachers can enlighten us to exactly how much real holiday they get...
the 5 days for training are relevant as its 5 days parents are inconvenienced and required to either shell out on child care or take annual leave themselves to cover it, on top of that school teachers exercise their right to strike, yet hardly any of them in % terms then use that day to march on to local government of the houses of parliament to voice their annoyance,
the last strike I was playing golf with 2 of them whilst our wives took the kids shopping,
Schools can not have it all ways, its ridiculous to consider fining parents and sending court letters at substantial cost, when the schools themselves put the kids out of school for 5-7 days themselves in addition to holidays, to say there was no lessons planned for that day, is 5 days worth of additional education they could do and should be spreading the lessons so they include those 5 days,
We do a limited amount of training during working hours but standards of service would undoubtedly suffer if we did it all then.
The onus is therefore on us to a great extent and the requirements of our professional bodies.
Lessons start at 9 and kids generally go home at 2.30 - 3.30 that gives them another couple of hours to start marking etc.
Many have classroom assistants these days, I know for a fact that lesson planning often gets delegated to the more capable of these.
They get more holiday than most. End of.