Term time holiday fines.

I get the fine point and am fully against it for kids with good attendance records. It's extremely classist that private school kids can travel fine free, whilst their public school equivalents can't. I've learnt so much more from my travels than I ever could in a classroom and firmly believe that travel tears down barriers and makes the world a more understanding, better place.

My point was that travelling in peak season obviously costs more than low season which a good number of posts complained about. It's like expecting tickets to a heavyweight title to cost the same as the Callum Simpson fight. Both are good - one's much more premium.

 

It's not only English people who travel.

 

Pure greed by travel companies and hotels. Adding to the Greed crisis, its called cost of living crisis but its really a greed crisis .

 

In lockdown teachers and schools were replaced by laptops. What couldn't be replaced was time with friends and loved ones. That's not to say I don't value teachers and the role they play, they are vital, but kids need the opportunity to become rounded people. We're going away next week, we'll be going to the zoo, on a steam railway, doing a boat tour, going to a waterpark, things that will hopefully create core memories for the kids. We've dropped on this year because the same holiday in 2025 is going to cost £900 more, meaning we won't be able to do all of that stuff. Criminalising parents for choosing to give their kids positive life experiences is ridiculous.

 

Again, this is nonsense. Issue is the cost of living in the UK. The average earner in the UK now gets paid €10k less than their Irish equivalent and less than many other European countries. Costs are going up because other travellers can afford them and will pay. The UK is no longer the affluent nation it was and what is affordable on the continent reflects this after 14 years of neglect.

 

And school are paying the price now for not having that face to face contact - social skills non existent and massive gaps in learning.

Oh and I do believe travel is vital and a great educational experience- don't blame anyone for doing it.

 

Another lockdown bonus.

 

It's been really interesting reading this thread. My parents were teachers, so there was absolutely no chance of taking any kind of holiday in term time; even if I'd knocked off for a day there would have been absolute hell to pay! When I think back to my school days, very few kids took any time off in term time. But like I say, I really hate the 'fines' model of dealing with it. Firstly you have to be able to afford it, and secondly it makes breaking the rules 'acceptable' (in that it becomes to be seen as a charge rather than a fine; a nursery school supervisor I knew hated late pick up fines for this reason - it increased the instances massively).

I wonder if there's a case for a kind of annual leave model for students? Everyone gets a week or two off during term time which they have to book off like they would if they were a grownup (with parents' permission, of course). Schools could block out certain times, but other than that teachers might be able to plan homework etc around it, or set targets for when they get back. Possibly good practice for real life too, first in terms of doing the admin but also when it comes to preparing yourself before you leave and dealing with the existential horror of coming back.

 

Absolutely disgusting. During the Covid madness my kids were denied any eduction for months.
But dare to go on holiday and be fined?

 

Actually, bit of a wild idea (in the spirit of moving fast and breaking things): why not give students - and teachers, of course - pretty much the same time off as everybody else, taken whenever they like, and scrap mandatory school holidays entirely? Reduce the length of the school day to compensate.

 

**** 'em!!, always rang mine in sick, play the game!!
Only ever took 'em away for a week at a time mind........sithi.

 

Can you tell me how your kids were denied any education for months during COVID? Just asking because my other half is a teacher and they didn't have a single day off during COVID, still having to teach classes via the laptop and still had to give out homework etc for the kids to do.

 

Yep I'd second that! I deliver computing to schools and set a load of schools up so they could teach remotely - was sick to the back teeth of teams, seesaw and google meet. Funnily, hardly any kids engaged with the online lessons that school set up . Loads of my teacher friends and colleagues were on call 24/7 , delivered worksheets to kids - made phone calls checking up to see if they were OK, worked in the support hubs across the city. I certainly wasn't sitting around doing nothing

 

Teachers get 'fined' their day's wages, which also has a knock on for pension so a double punishment. Teachers (and any low-paid other school staff) also can't take holidays during term time. They can go their whole life until retirement never being able to have a holiday outside of 13 set weeks of the year if they stayed within the education sector. Not only does that come with the ridiculously high prices but also limits when they can go on certain holidays (there are only 3 set times of the year - December, April/May and August when they can have a fortnight away somewhere).

 

I know firsthand how hard our school worked and no member of staff had any time off at all but it was very dependent on the school as to what they provided, certainly during the first lockdown. I do know some schools that didn't provide any live lessons during the first one.

 

Think the first one took many by surprise and they expected it to be for a few weeks. The photocopiers were on overdrive a few days before it was announced

 

Indeed. We went to Tunisia beginning of July, always go outside school hols here, the price obviously but also to try to avoid loads of squawking kids. Little did we know it was school holidays in Tunisia, so hotel was full of kids squawking in another language, FFS

 

Yes I can, firstly however I do not doubt teachers were busy at home or in empty schools. If this was productive or not we do not know or I certainly don't. I assume remote learning for children throws up all sorts of issues.

But back to the first point. Both my children have Autism and very complex needs, particularly my younger son who is non verbal.
Online learning for a servery autistic Non verbal child and another who has complex needs of his own is rather difficult to provide.
To the point where both were essentially cut off completely. Now the news were telling us all children with a EHCP were to be allowed into school. Alas this was definitely not the case as a result of social distancing regulations it was not possible to accommodate all the children.
I believe it was somewhere around 10-12 weeks of term both completely missed out on.

 

If they made it an option to take kids out of 5 days of school a year, all the unscrupulous bar stewards at Thomas Cook and Jet 2 would just make it more expensive all the time. I’ll stick to paying the fine.