http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36277940

I dont have kids at school any more but I am still happy with this ruling. Stupid fucking councils.

Cushty! Nice cheap holiday for us next year then.

Can kids not be left in school while the parents holiday? Win win that way, no fine and a stress free holiday.

The Law will now change and any leeway for common sense will be removed. Hardly a win more of ensuring the whole job is fooked

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The law should never have been brought in to start with. Seems like everyone bar the government was happy with how things were.

Kids shouldn't be taken out of school unless they're ill, it's not fair on the kids to miss part of their education and is only done for the benefit of the parents. FACT.

It's also not fair that Holiday Companies charge ridiculous amounts during the school holidays.
It's also not fair that kids should miss out on holidays wether it be in the UK or abroad.

Not quite as black and white though for a lot of parents I know.

A couple of years ago our eldest was allowed two days out of school to come to a wedding in Scotland. His attendance had been 100% up until then, so the school were fine with it.

Exactly, most of my best childhood memories are from family holidays. They are more beneficial and can be just as educational as a daft week or two at school. Kids are at school for at least 11 years, a holiday or two in term time isn't going to make any difference long term to what grades they get.

Some middle ground has got to be found what places charge in school holidays is an absolute piss take, we've gone to Center Parcs for the last couple of years, fortunately both of ours are still under school age, it's the first week of February and costs about three hundred quid for the week (about the same cost as a pint while you're there!) a week later during half term for the same lodge for the same Monday-Friday holiday they want a grand which is absurd. We only have one more year and the oldest will be at school and I just wouldn't pay that as much as we and the kids enjoy it.

Utter utter bollocks.

What is a fact though is kids miss more education when teachers are off ill and are replaced by agency people who are usually graduates.

But the schools keep that stuff quiet.

And dont get fined sixty quid for doing it.

I took both my kids out of school three times. They were both straight A students.

One has just graduated from durham uni. And the other is about to go to durham uni.

Just because schools have problems with truancy doesnt mean good kids have to suffer the consequences.

Probably has more to do with league tables.

And how come its ok to take kids out of school as long as you pay the £60?

Cos all the £60 fines add up and pay for the teachers jollies in the school holidays.

If hotels and holiday parks charged term time rates all year they would go bust. They need to increase the prices at the most popular times in order to cover their whole year costs. Too many people think that they have some kind of entitlement to the moon on a stick rather than cutting their cloth. We never went abroad when I was a kid because my parents couldn't afford it but kids will enjoy a few days in a caravan or tent during the school holidays just as much. Jetting off somewhere fancy during term time is purely for the parents own benefit.

Increase the price but triple them? Take the example I gave, Center Parcs, if they didn't charge three times the price they do at other times of the year they'd go bust!? Seriously??

I agree.

The companies evaluate the sales required to maintain growth, divide the sum by 52, there are weeks when nobody goes on holiday and peak times when everyone wants one, so they reduce the price at lowest season and increase it at peak to break even, lucky if you have no kids or not, depending on how you look at it.

And you didn't turn out to be a miserable sod did you!?

This guy has just screwed it up for everyone. Head teachers always had the discretion to allow term time holidays in exceptional circumstances (not including saving mam and dad a few bob). Stand by for that ending. Some folks think that their kids lives are somehow marred and incomplete without a fancy holiday every year. Bollocks. Term time is for school (exceptional circumstances permitting). Holidays are for holidays and kids don't need masses spent on them to have brilliant holidays that they'll always remember.

Well said, teachers have to take holidays at peak times also, level playing field.

Your correct with kids having brilliant holidays, my 25 year old daughter( who is a teacher ) recalls the caravan holiday in Southport over foreign resorts, mainly due to seeking out fun stuff to do, rather than lying around a hotel pool for two weeks!
If you gave kids the option, adventure and doing things with the family or sun bed lounging, no contest.

You forgot those with genuine reasons for going abroad, for example those with family overseas. They're effectively either priced out of seeing their loved ones or penalised for doing so.
Not all head teachers would be understanding of that and as you say it's down to one individuals discretion.

Not forgetting your own experience with a kid who didn't take a holiday abroad, instead choosing to innocently play with her CB radio...bet she doesn't forget that experience in a hurry.

What about parents who can't get time off during school holidays . The one chance to get time together, which is precious to me, but doesn't register with the people who dream these things up. The sort of people who labour under the delusion everyone lives like them.
No one is advocating a holiday a month, but some leeway has to be there.
Incidentally, these rules don't apply to private schools.

I read a post on another site by a Canadian person, who said taking family holidays during term-time is fairly usual over there, and teachers are quite relaxed about it. What seems to happen is that the holidaying kid gets told what work will be done at school that week and so can do it off their own bat, to make up for lost time.

What annoys me is the way schools themselves organise holidays for kids during term time, often costing quite a lot of money. I imagine many parents, especially ones with many kids, can't afford much in the way of family holidays at all, once they've paid hundreds for their kid to go off to Europe with a teacher.

If there are close relatives abroad then that should fall into the exceptional circumstances bracket so I haven't forgotten about that. I am one such person who may not be able to get leave during holidays so I would expect some understanding from a head teacher bit I wouldn't expect more than a week and it certainly needn't be every year. I also don't get more than one weekend a month off but still I manage to make the most of opportunities and spend quality time with the kids.

I do understand the annoyance with schools organising all these trips abroad. So far our lass's sons have been offered trips to France (£350), Russia (£700), Portugal (£1300) and Nicaragua (£3000). Secondary education is supposed to be a level playing field. If these trips are so important to education then why put an instant wealth filter on them?

Jesus wept. There are some fucking weird people on here. Never read so much shite.

The inference here is that even missing one day at school even at the age of six means you will be a social retard at 16.

What about:

Parents that cant get time off during the holidays.

People with family abroad.

Schools that organise unnecessary trips during school time.

Schools that allow kids to miss lessons for sporting or musical events.

Teachers on the sick?

And so on.

If any of you think your child will end up being one of them social retards because you took them out of school aged 7 then I question your parentage.

Get a grip.

Some bizarre posts on here.

Poor ripper is gunna be organising funding days for them broke poor holiday companies.

His logic is bizarre, if holiday companies hike prices to cover for slow winter months, why don't they hike them all summer? Just this coincidental period when they know school children are off school.


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The DfE have long lost touch with reality and the everyday needs of parents, children and teachers alike. They resemble a cantankerous old fella at the end of a street who sticks a knife into any football that touches his grass and ends up wondering why the rest of the street hate him.

They are literally doing things now to wind people up and just promote a snobbish air of arrogant pontification. They want us all to feel inadequate and useless.

I'm a teacher and a parent (something I think people forget can happen) and the biggest obstacle from all of this is the holiday providers who hold term times at ransom with the extortionate rates. They hide behind claims of supply and demand, but it's clearly an increasingly paper thin argument.

I thought things would improve once Gove took his snivelling backside out of the department, but Morgan is seemingly moulding herself into a pantomime villain at every opportunity. The government have pretty much declared war on education and it's about time parents and teachers joined together to put a stop to this absolutely archaic way of approaching the future for our children...

Well said.

Unfortunately as much as I admire teachers I think the head teachers are a huge problem. And their stupid arguments.

And god help your children if they are ill for a week. Their whole future is fucked.

At school we were always told you should never start a sentence with a conjunction

You were probably off that week

Regardless of what you think on this subject I think this guy's victory has shot everyone else in the foot on the long run. Blue Beards account does however get me thinking that there are bigger fish to fry in education and quicker and easier gains to be made than hammering down on term time holidays.

Term time holidays...whose benefit are they for.?

Who is harmed by them?

We all, of course, know that there's a legal obligation to get your kids to school. But when did that obligation become so important that everyone else (that's you Mr Ripper and Monkeybutt) feels that they can freely comment on those who may push the boundaries of that obligation. I'm with Mr Gloves on this one.

I find it bizarre that people on here, that I would normally assume were sane, cannot separate sensible, caring parents, that might be wanting to take their kids on a holiday of a lifetime, with those parents with kids playing truant regularly.

Most parents that do this think long and hard, and normally arrange the holidays at non exam times, usually tag them on to holidays about to happen anyway, and generally have kids that have good attendance records anyway.

Head teachers attack these parents because it makes it harder for them to manage the poorly attending students...................yet another example of us all having to succumb to the lowest common denominator, and yet another race to the bottom.

If Head teachers honestly, and they are dishonest, believe that by a 10 year old missing school for 5 days will permanently disadvantaged by the time they are 16, then they are far too stupid to be in the position they are.

Oh but look!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its Ok for parents to do it, as long as you pay the fine. When the fine is paid, the kids are suddenly not going to suffer later.

I see none of the pro head stance have answered ny earlier points about kids being off ill, or what happens when teachers are off ill.

Both of those cases will create exactly the same probelms fporkids as going on holiday wont they?

Are parents fined if their kids are sick? Are teachers fined if they are sick?

Its OK though for 21 year old graduates, working for an employment agency, to rpelace ill teachers for up to a week, with no experience whatsover in the subjects they cover. This happens, regularly.

Thankgod my kids are out of this system now.

Surely teachers get bored of being on holiday. They get 53 weeks a year as well as only working 5 hours a day.

Well said Colonel!!!!

That's exactly right. Rules are thought up to solve one problem (eg truanting, which remains unsolved and in exactly the same state as it was before) and then applied to something entirely different, which didn't need fixing in the first place. That way, it can be said that 'steps' are being taken to put matters right.

(In fact, I'd go so far as to say you've been right on almost every political issue that's ever been discussed on the Bunker......)

You are taking the piss now right, Mrs?

I don't get it. Are teachers' parents taking them away on holiday in term-time now?

No, I'm not.
I probably meant that you say exactly what I was going to say so now I needn't bother and can have a coffee instead.

I suspect our leader has his maths wrong. Or he thinks teachers have it so easy they get more weeks off per year than there are weeks in the year. Or he thinks they ahve it THAT easy, its what it seems.

Or he is just irrelevant.

Since when were opinions and free speech banned, or is that notion part of your autocratic EU aspirations?

Just a minute. What is an autocratic EU aspiration? Does it mean you aspire to banning children going to Europe in term-time?

I was taken out of school in my first year at Martyrs to go to Florida... Best holiday of my entire life.

yes but it obviously fucked you up completely. Ripper and them have said so.

I had autocratic aspirations but epsom salts sorted it out.

You didn't read what I said about the EU, did you?

I used to be a teacher for quite a long time and I can honestly say that I only ever noticed one kid being disadvantaged by a term time holiday. His parents booked it for the first week of his GCSEs so he missed the exams.

Parents can help kids to achieve by encouraging reading, helping them to get a good routine and get to bed at sensible times, feeding them decent meals and making them feel that education is valuable. If they do all that and that the kids will attend regularly and thrive unless they've got some specific educational or social needs that cause problems. The odd holiday makes no difference at all and it might even be positive if it widens their horizons a bit.

The whole fuss is just to give the appearance of positive action without spending a penny on addressing the real causes of under-achievement in working class communities.

The Fat Man, the Colonel, Chip, Grabec and Born Toulouse - they all take sense and they will all go to heaven

fuck me I hope not. The thought of an afterlife surrounded forever by religion is a fate I just cant entertain.