Children taking holidays in term time

[darrenm]

I can only speak for my own expereince and of those of people I know but it was completely the norm for children to take some holidays in term time. Of course not a month in Australia but a week in Ibiza in early September or Canary Islands early Jan quite normal.

I never saw any strain on the student or the teachers, but that's only my own experience.

From my own experience, September is the absolute worst time to take any kid out of school. Messed up my whole year of education, every year, because my parents were cheapskates. I missed a week or 2 of the new year and never got to catch up. Did crap at school primarily due to this.

[Risso]

We're taking ours to Center Parcs in May.  The good thing is that half term over here is in TT week which tends to be at a different time to half term in most of the UK so prices are a bit more reasonable.

[Danwichmann]

Take them out of school, what will they miss really?

90% of stuff they learn at school they will never use in life anyway.

What complete bollocks.

[colhint]

When I lived in Chester, we looked at going to the one in the lake district. (2 hours away) We found it was cheaper, to drive, take the ferry and go to one in Holland

[StefanAVFC]

It saddens me a touch that an argument with Trent (who isn't even a teacher and wasn't particularly defending them) turned into an anti-teacher rant.

 

Firstly, there are a lot of shit teachers. There are 2 types of shit teachers. Those who do work for the holidays, good hours and weekend off and those who work 70 hour weeks, not working SMART-ly at all and then moan about their hours. These are the 2 stereotypes that get thrown into our face whenever there is a debate on teachers. I fully accept that there are those that completely take the piss and are terrible at their jobs. I would be able to empathise with parents if all teachers were like this. But, there are plenty of teachers that fall into the middle of this. I'm not going to blow my own horn and pretend I'm super-teacher or anything, but it needs to be said. I used to be one of those that did really long hours but was still always behind. It's because I've learnt to time-manage. I can do a weeks planning in a day. I mark in the lesson. Freeing my time up to do more beneficial things like working-walls, more engaging resources, more focused targets etc. It is a long week (averaging 12 hours a day with travel) but I take nothing home most days. Now this analogy might sound like self-congratulation but it's just putting into context what being a good teacher looks like in hours. (as opposed to an RI/Inadequate one)

 

Now an issue with the general public is that everyone has an opinion in education because they went to school. However, schools are vastly different to what you see on the outside. This leads to often lazy stereotyping. Now, I can see how annoying not being able to take a holiday in term time is. You know why? Because teachers have the same problem! I'd love to be able to go to America this summer and get my flights for half the cost, but I can't either. Anyway, that's beside the point.

 

As somebody on a previous page said, attendance is taken very seriously by OFSTED, therefore it's taken very seriously by LEA's and schools. A school can drop down a grade if their attendance percentages don't add up. For me, it just seems that teachers can't win with regards to this specific point. It's a cycle.

 

Teachers work hard to become good/outstanding and parents want to send their children to these schools.

Attendance slips because children are going on holiday in term time.

OFSTED come and see attendance isn't great, average/bad inspection.

Teachers are pissed off because all their hard work creating fun, challenging lessons has been undermined because Jimmy's parents didn't want to pay full whack for a holiday.

Parents are pissed off because the school has a worse OFSTED report.

LEA are pissed off because it looks bad on them.

 

Obviously this is an extreme example, but it's no joke how seriously they take attendance.

 

I could go on and on and on but I'll have bored half of you to death and it is Friday night.

 

Oh and to a previous poster, it's pretty hilarious that you think so little of be all the work a teacher does if you can 'catch up on a missed week in 2 minutes by reading a chapter in a book' . And your comparison to an office is nonsense.

 

N.B I would never strike either. Not over P+C. I knew what I signed up for before I came in. I would strike if anything came in that directly affected learning because Gove's (as much as I joke around him) expertise when it comes to education is that he went to school, so I'd feel uncomfortable taking any sort of instruction from him.

[AndyM3000]

 

Take them out of school, what will they miss really?

90% of stuff they learn at school they will never use in life anyway.

What complete bollocks.

 

 

History, Art, French, Metal Work, RE, just a few subjects that were a complete waste of time. Never used half the shit I was taught at Maths/Science either.

[StefanAVFC]

That's secondary school stuff.

 

History is less about the facts these days and more about how to pick information from texts and it's just as important to tell children what happened so that is doesn't happen again.

Art encourages creativity so there's every chance you used something you learnt in art indirectly.

French, non-compulsory until this September.

How much metal work did you actually do? I mean really.

RE is incredibly important and I'm not religious in the slightest. A lot of racial conflict is born from racial/religious ignorance.

 

You use maths every day. Science should be about finding things out.

 

Obviously some teachers will just teach to the curriculum, but a good teacher will focus on the skills you access from doing these subjects.

 

And I find it funny that you initially listed subjects that add up to roughly 15% of the curriculum (when your original figure was 90%) then shoehorned in science and maths

Edited March 28, 2014 by StefanAVFC

[NoelVilla]

I work in the education sector but Im not a teacher. Being around and looking at it from the side I think one of our schools biggest problems are illustrated in the picture. So children with responsible and sound parents could take holidays in term time; problem is who is going to decide that.

 

[Eames]

It saddens me a touch that an argument with Trent (who isn't even a teacher and wasn't particularly defending them) turned into an anti-teacher rant.

Firstly, there are a lot of shit teachers. There are 2 types of shit teachers. Those who do work for the holidays, good hours and weekend off and those who work 70 hour weeks, not working SMART-ly at all and then moan about their hours. These are the 2 stereotypes that get thrown into our face whenever there is a debate on teachers. I fully accept that there are those that completely take the piss and are terrible at their jobs. I would be able to empathise with parents if all teachers were like this. But, there are plenty of teachers that fall into the middle of this. I'm not going to blow my own horn and pretend I'm super-teacher or anything, but it needs to be said. I used to be one of those that did really long hours but was still always behind. It's because I've learnt to time-manage. I can do a weeks planning in a day. I mark in the lesson. Freeing my time up to do more beneficial things like working-walls, more engaging resources, more focused targets etc. It is a long week (averaging 12 hours a day with travel) but I take nothing home most days. Now this analogy might sound like self-congratulation but it's just putting into context what being a good teacher looks like in hours. (as opposed to an RI/Inadequate one)

Now an issue with the general public is that everyone has an opinion in education because they went to school. However, schools are vastly different to what you see on the outside. This leads to often lazy stereotyping. Now, I can see how annoying not being able to take a holiday in term time is. You know why? Because teachers have the same problem! I'd love to be able to go to America this summer and get my flights for half the cost, but I can't either. Anyway, that's beside the point.

As somebody on a previous page said, attendance is taken very seriously by OFSTED, therefore it's taken very seriously by LEA's and schools. A school can drop down a grade if their attendance percentages don't add up. For me, it just seems that teachers can't win with regards to this specific point. It's a cycle.

Teachers work hard to become good/outstanding and parents want to send their children to these schools.

Attendance slips because children are going on holiday in term time.

OFSTED come and see attendance isn't great, average/bad inspection.

Teachers are pissed off because all their hard work creating fun, challenging lessons has been undermined because Jimmy's parents didn't want to pay full whack for a holiday.

Parents are pissed off because the school has a worse OFSTED report.

LEA are pissed off because it looks bad on them.

Obviously this is an extreme example, but it's no joke how seriously they take attendance.

I could go on and on and on but I'll have bored half of you to death and it is Friday night.

Oh and to a previous poster, it's pretty hilarious that you think so little of be all the work a teacher does if you can 'catch up on a missed week in 2 minutes by reading a chapter in a book' . And your comparison to an office is nonsense.

N.B I would never strike either. Not over P+C. I knew what I signed up for before I came in. I would strike if anything came in that directly affected learning because Gove's (as much as I joke around him) expertise when it comes to education is that he went to school, so I'd feel uncomfortable taking any sort of instruction from him.

Top post Stefan. A like doesn't seem to cut it here.

Attendance is key to everything. Ofsted, improving attainment, aspiration, positive outcomes literally everything.

A 2 week holiday once a year doesn't seem that bad...without any other absence a child will get about 94% attendance across the year. But across a child's entire compulsory education that's 24 weeks or as near as dammit 6 months out of school.

Holidays in term time is not the major issue preventing children from achieving....and the situation is far too nuanced for me to go into detail on my phone....but it is a very quick win for both schools and the government.

[mykeyb]

if you staggered the holidays wouldn't the travel companies just increase the fares over a longer period to ensure they still fleece everyone ?

I looked at Center Parcs once for the kids , the difference in price between term time and non term time was criminal ... everyone should boycott them on principle and teach them a lesson

But centerparcs is rammed outside term time and dead inside it. Why should they lower the prices that people seem perfectly happy to pay?

If the terms were staggered more, the whole idea of competition between travels companies ensures prices will be as low as they can be. It's not like it's one entity that can decide arbitrarily how much they're going to charge. If first choice keep prices high, then Thomson will undercut them and so on.

But being as terms need to be a certain size and having to coincide with Xmas, Easter and summer exams where are you going to get the flexibility to have these holidays. It could actually make it worse. Spread the holidays out more evenly and you could end up with the summer holidays being only 4 weeks long, how much of a premium will the holiday companies charge for those?

[Genie]

It saddens me a touch that an argument with Trent (who isn't even a teacher and wasn't particularly defending them) turned into an anti-teacher rant.

 

Firstly, there are a lot of shit teachers. There are 2 types of shit teachers. Those who do work for the holidays, good hours and weekend off and those who work 70 hour weeks, not working SMART-ly at all and then moan about their hours. These are the 2 stereotypes that get thrown into our face whenever there is a debate on teachers. I fully accept that there are those that completely take the piss and are terrible at their jobs. I would be able to empathise with parents if all teachers were like this. But, there are plenty of teachers that fall into the middle of this. I'm not going to blow my own horn and pretend I'm super-teacher or anything, but it needs to be said. I used to be one of those that did really long hours but was still always behind. It's because I've learnt to time-manage. I can do a weeks planning in a day. I mark in the lesson. Freeing my time up to do more beneficial things like working-walls, more engaging resources, more focused targets etc. It is a long week (averaging 12 hours a day with travel) but I take nothing home most days. Now this analogy might sound like self-congratulation but it's just putting into context what being a good teacher looks like in hours. (as opposed to an RI/Inadequate one)

 

Now an issue with the general public is that everyone has an opinion in education because they went to school. However, schools are vastly different to what you see on the outside. This leads to often lazy stereotyping. Now, I can see how annoying not being able to take a holiday in term time is. You know why? Because teachers have the same problem! I'd love to be able to go to America this summer and get my flights for half the cost, but I can't either. Anyway, that's beside the point.

 

As somebody on a previous page said, attendance is taken very seriously by OFSTED, therefore it's taken very seriously by LEA's and schools. A school can drop down a grade if their attendance percentages don't add up. For me, it just seems that teachers can't win with regards to this specific point. It's a cycle.

 

Teachers work hard to become good/outstanding and parents want to send their children to these schools.

Attendance slips because children are going on holiday in term time.

OFSTED come and see attendance isn't great, average/bad inspection.

Teachers are pissed off because all their hard work creating fun, challenging lessons has been undermined because Jimmy's parents didn't want to pay full whack for a holiday.

Parents are pissed off because the school has a worse OFSTED report.

LEA are pissed off because it looks bad on them.

 

Obviously this is an extreme example, but it's no joke how seriously they take attendance.

 

I could go on and on and on but I'll have bored half of you to death and it is Friday night.

 

Oh and to a previous poster, it's pretty hilarious that you think so little of be all the work a teacher does if you can 'catch up on a missed week in 2 minutes by reading a chapter in a book' . And your comparison to an office is nonsense.

 

N.B I would never strike either. Not over P+C. I knew what I signed up for before I came in. I would strike if anything came in that directly affected learning because Gove's (as much as I joke around him) expertise when it comes to education is that he went to school, so I'd feel uncomfortable taking any sort of instruction from him.

Hi Stefan, It is great to have this debate with a real teacher and thanks for taking the time to post (sorry if this comes across patronising, certainly not meant to be!).

 

All I would like to add was that in the opening post, and the previous page my suggestion was that 1 week of holiday flexibility was authorised officially. This would mean it wouldn't be classed as unauthorised absence, it shouldn't effect attendance figues and wouldn't effect OFSTED ratings.

 

I'm not sure if it was deliberate but the comment about catching up in 2 mins was clearly not what was meant. It was a means of keeping the momentum on a given subject whilst off. With 10 or so subjects, a high school student could avoid falling so far behind by taking some ready material and activities away with them.

[StefanAVFC]

No worries mate, I certainly didn't think you'd be like that (I was tired in my initial post!)

 

AFAIK, even authorised absences count towards your figures. If they didn't headteachers would just authorise them willy-nilly because they wouldn't count. 

 

re: 2 mins. Might work for 1/10 children in a high school setting. Wouldn't work for most (if not all) primary school children and most secondary school children. A week is a fair few lessons!

 

Example: I'm teaching a unit on writing fairy tales at the moment in Literacy. It's a 3 week unit. The lay out looks like this.

 

Long term outcome (what they need to have done): -> To write a fairy tale 

Success Criteria (What we assess it against): -> Beginning, middle and end.

Powerful vocabulary

Character/setting descriptions

 

Week 1 was writing a 'cold' fairy tale, reading a fairy tale and writing character descriptions. Each of these lessons will have short term outcomes. (with their own individual SC) Week 2 was settings, story planning (which is a HUGE concept in the teaching of writing) and week 3 is finishing off and evaluating.

 

I plan every single one of these lessons in the three weeks as an important feature of the unit. If a child buggers off for one of those weeks, that's five lessons. In this example unit, that's either week 1) no character descriptions (SC for long term outcomes) week 2) No idea how to plan (SC for long term outcome) week 3) won't have any sort of finished story (therefore I can't assess their writing against their 'cold')

 

All that disruption of that child's learning for a week's holiday? It doesn't bother me as a teacher; 29 other child will still move along the unit; but that child will have no idea how to structure a fairy tale specifically. Obviously a child will do more than one story writing unit during a year, but they will be behind when we next come to it. Again, this doesn't affect me because I'll have to go over it again quite prescriptively with the lower ability (they need absolutely everything scaffolded), but that means Jimmy won't be working at his correct level.

 

Sorry again for going on and on; I find it all quite interesting but nobody else does

Edited March 28, 2014 by StefanAVFC

[Danwichmann]

 

 

Take them out of school, what will they miss really?

90% of stuff they learn at school they will never use in life anyway.

What complete bollocks.

 

 

History, Art, French, Metal Work, RE, just a few subjects that were a complete waste of time. Never used half the shit I was taught at Maths/Science either.

 

 

I could waste my time going into the skills and understanding you get from each of those subjects, but really can't be bothered.

 

So I'll just say that in primary school children spend a good 50% of their time learning literacy and numeracy. If those are skills you don't use in everyday life then maybe school was wasted in you. On the other hand, if those are skills you don't use in everyday life then maybe oxygen is wasted on you. 

[AndyM3000]

I was on about secondary school, don't have a problem with how primary schools are run so I won't comment on that in regards to taking kids out of school for holidays.

[tonyh29]

Take them out of school, what will they miss really?

90% of stuff they learn at school they will never use in life anyway.

What complete bollocks.

History, Art, French, Metal Work, RE, just a few subjects that were a complete waste of time. Never used half the shit I was taught at Maths/Science either.

I could waste my time going into the skills and understanding you get from each of those subjects, but really can't be bothered.

So I'll just say that in primary school children spend a good 50% of their time learning literacy and numeracy. If those are skills you don't use in everyday life then maybe school was wasted in you. On the other hand, if those are skills you don't use in everyday life then maybe oxygen is wasted on you.

Maybe only 40% of oxygen is wasted on him and the other 65% is put to good use

[Eames]

No worries mate, I certainly didn't think you'd be like that (I was tired in my initial post!)

AFAIK, even authorised absences count towards your figures. If they didn't headteachers would just authorise them willy-nilly because they wouldn't count.

The current preferred measure is "Persistent Absence" ie those kids that miss 15% or more in a term or across an academic year. All absence is counted in this calculation. Unauthorised absence just means the LA is more likely to target you for fines/prosecution etc.

Bizarrely schools are judged on whether or not they are above the national average for attendance. Which means that 49.9% of schools automatically fail the attendance measure.

[Danwichmann]

I was on about secondary school, don't have a problem with how primary schools are run so I won't comment on that in regards to taking kids out of school for holidays.

 

My experience is all around primary, but children continue learning valuable skills all the way through school and missing just a few lessons can be damaging.

 

Of course there is value to travel as well. If a child from a disadvantaged background has a once in a lifetime chance to visit another country they should go. Few teachers would disagree. But a week or 2 out every year for a repeat package holiday is going to damage a child's education far more than most people seem to realise. 

[StefanAVFC]

 

No worries mate, I certainly didn't think you'd be like that (I was tired in my initial post!)

AFAIK, even authorised absences count towards your figures. If they didn't headteachers would just authorise them willy-nilly because they wouldn't count.

The current preferred measure is "Persistent Absence" ie those kids that miss 15% or more in a term or across an academic year. All absence is counted in this calculation. Unauthorised absence just means the LA is more likely to target you for fines/prosecution etc.

Bizarrely schools are judged on whether or not they are above the national average for attendance. Which means that 49.9% of schools automatically fail the attendance measure.

 

 

I need to ask you a question Eames because you're far more experienced than me. How the hell do schools get Inadequate?

 

I work in a good school (that will hopefully be outstanding at next inspection) and I don't find it hard keeping up with the standards. I get my books scrutinised, I'm observed, I've observed other teachers and the TA's are great, but it doesn't seem like everyone is working their arses off. We're just doing what we do every day and everything is going great. If someone was going wrong it would be picked up instantly and corrected.

 

How do schools get so dysfunctional without somebody doing something about it? Is it laziness?

[Eames]

See all the things you've described don't happen in inadequate schools. Mostly it's terrible leadership...be it a failure to create a positive ethos or just a wild over exaggeration of the quality of teaching or pupils behaviour. Some heads get so obsessed with tiny details the forget the bigger picture.

The inadequate schools I've dealt with recently have failed to make recommended changes and mostly underplay the issues they have. Some of the sefs I've seen recently have been hilarious.

[NoelVilla]

How do schools in the UK get money? Is it based on immigration, parents education and the socioeconomics of the area. I can give you Stefan a pretty good answer on swedish terms but Im not gonna say anything about UK just yet.