Im Gld He Didn' Win!

[bednobs]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39504338
if he had won it would have been like saying "hey kids, turn up to school when you want"

[murraymints]

school is school and parents will just have to reprioritise !

[ummmm]

Your keyboard still playing up :-)

I'm on the fence on this one. I do understand why they shouldn't miss school but surely lessons are planned in advance and they can be sent with homework.

Holidays are often educational too. Whenever I took mine away they always learnt something new. This was obviously back in the day when it was down the headmasters discretion.

If a child has an excellent attendance record I can't see how having a week off would do them much damage.

[murraymints]

2 weeks in disneyland can not in anyway be deemed educational !

[ummmm]

I doubt they spent the whole 2 weeks in Disney land. If they did at least they learnt how to queue :-)

[murraymints]

lol....2 hours was enough for me !!!

[ichkeria]

I'm glad too.
I take the point about extortionate term-time holiday prices but that is not really an excuse. Besides, if people started taking their children with them during term time, holiday operators would soon cotton on, and meanwhile, the same high prices would still apply at the usual times.
I am also not sure I can sympathise with anyone who wears such ridiculous shades, either :-)

[jackthehat]

As children are no longer required to help bring in Summer harvests, I think the long 6/7 week summer holiday needs doing away with. A longer, re-vamped school-year ought to be more flexible when it comes to school/holiday/ family-time balance.

[ichkeria]

Who's going to do it when the Polish veggie pickers leave, jack :-)

[bhg481]

I have no beef with children being taken away from school before they get to secondary school. I feel that early education is learning basic skills and practising them. Once they get to secondary school education in many subjects becomes sequential, in that you need to understand today's lesson before you can learn tomorrow's; taking them away from school at that stage is detrimental.
It's only for a few years that you have to restrain yourself - part of having children.

[ummmm]

When mine were in school we had to fill out a holiday request form. It was either granted or denied. I never had a holiday request denied because of their attendance record. I know people, same school, who had their requests denied.

I would never have taken holidays close to exams or anytime where I thought it would interfere with their education.

Even after this rule was brought in I requested my son have a few days off and the head agreed.

[dannyk13]

Not mentioned in the article, but I hope he had to pay costs amounting to more than his original fine of £120.

[ummmm]

danny - if I remember correctly he's quite a wealthy man.

I remember the first interview and the reason he took the kids out of school was his eldest child went to a private school and their school holidays didn't coincide with the younger kids.

[aelmpvw]

looks like the Platt family will have to settle for a weekend in skeggy this year

[bhg481]

Interesting comment in the Daily Mail by someone:

why is it always the poor that gets hammered? pay double in term time if not pay a fine, ok its cheeper to pay the fine however that aside the real issue is who's child is it? when we give schools the rite to make decisions about whats best for our children and if they get it wrong are they going to be prosecuted? this concept that children can only be abused at home needs looking at.. I will probably be homeschooling mine very shortly with primitive attitudes such as this.....

Riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes and ends by saying it will homeschool its own children.

[ummmm]

That's the thing though, bhg, anyone can remove their child from school.

[andy-hughes]

When you see a school cracking down on a parent who takes his child out for a week, it looks draconian.

But the rule is also in place for the Asian families, who take their primary age children back to India and Pakistan for three or four months at a time, and the children return having forgotten their English, as well as being miles behind their classmates, which creates work for the staff.

Having been married to a teacher, and with three children, we have accepted the price hike in holiday time - it's not right, but it's there, and flouting rules you don't like is not a good example to set your children.

[andy-hughes]

Ooops - just to clarify, when I said 'having been married to a teacher ...' I meant that the present Mrs Hughes is no longer a teacher, not that we are no longer married!

[kvalidir]

I and all my siblings were home schooled, and I never felt it disadvantaged me in any shape or form. In fact, on reflection,quite the reverse, I think I have been able to have experiences that most kids attending school would never have, travel being one of them.

[ummmm]

Andy - as I've said, they are relatively new rules, these rules weren't in place when my kids were young and often holidays were agreed to.

[andy-hughes]

ummmm - They are new rules - we had to suck up the inflated holiday prices because my wife was a teacher, and they were a bit touchy about her having two weeks off in term time!