Government legislation for time off infant school?

[scotty]

Hello,
does anyone know what is the generally accepted amount of time off an infant school will allow which conforms with government guidelines. I have been told the [catholic] infant school my daughter is due to attend in September is very strict and wont grant any time off for family vacations and expect your childs attendance to be 96% including sickness although no one can tell me in real terms what 96% represents as a number of days off. We of course take our daughters education very seriously and we are incredibly lucky that has got into an excellent school however......other friends in our area have told me that the schools locally will accept 10days. Thoughts/info please. Many thanks

[andy-hughes]

I think this is largely at the discretion of the Head Teacher.

The legislation was brought in particularly to avoid the common practice of Asian parents taking primary children out of school for three or four months at a time to visit relatives, and then they returned having forgotten almost all their English.

If you can present factual evidence of why your child must be taken out of school in term time, it will probably be viewed sympathetically, as long as it's not a regular occurence.

If in doubtl, have a formal chat with your daughter's form teacher, or Head.

[Mamjet]

How the **** are you supposed to plan when your child's sick? I hate ******* nuns.

[andy-hughes]

Mamjet - the issue revolves around holidays in term time - some parents are unable to take their annual holidays when the schools are out.

As for your religious feelings - thanks for sharing, feel better now?

[froggequene]

Ring your Local Authority & ask to speak to the Education Welfare Service, they should be able to explain any legislation relating to a child's attendance in school.

As Andy Hughes has pointed out it usually revolves around concerns about taking children for holidays during term time, if a child is ill, they're ill & there's very little anyone can do about it. It may also be a ploy by the school to keep truancy rates down.

On your Local Authority website it should have the dates of terms for the current academic year & the coming academic year, it usually works out how many days the school will actually be open. In my Local Authority it's 195 days in total.

[Ice.Maiden]

I've generally been led to believe that providing you fill in a holiday form, you're allowed up to ten days of term-time holiday. Obviously, it wouldn't be a good idea to take your child out of school during SATS, etc., but as for being ill, no one can dictate as to when a child's going to fall prey to some bug or other. I always contact the school on a daily basis if either of mine've been forced to take time off, and they also see a doctor, to prove that they've been absent for a good reason.

[scotty]

Thank you very much everyone. Mamjet....oh how I chuckled! Not Nuns actually but I hear where your coming from!! If our doughter is ill she isn't going to school and I will happily argue the toss with anyone who feels brave enough to confront me. I have heard some horror stories about how this is handled [not particularly at our school].
I will look at the local authority web site and also speak to the school direct.
Thanks again and keep the answers coming it all helps.

[Ice.Maiden]

My eldest son had rather a bit of time away from school last term, because first he was involved in an accident which necessitated him going to hospital. When he recovered from severe muscle strain. he then caught a sickness and diarrhoea bug! This floored him for over a week. once he got back to school, he was there for less than a month, and was hit by yet another bug - followed by a streaming cold and bad cough! I had to go into school in person, or be accountable to the school welfare officer! Once I showed them the dates of illness, visits to the hospital and doctors, and copies of emails that I'd sent to back up phone calls - they apologised!!!! I think they were just following procedures, but I made my annoyance felt. When I asked if they'd rather've had me let my son attend school and pass the bugs onto others, they said no - of course not - so I know I did right.

[kempie]

In England, for example, schools must provide children with 380 half-day learning sessions each academic year - this equates to 190 full days.

A target of 4% absenteeism is around 7.5 days.

You can read read about attendance targets etc. here...

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id =2008_0030

[kempie]

Further reading...

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/atoz/a /attendanceandabsence/