Families should be allowed to take their children out of school, even if they are giving 5 days annual leave for holidays during term time.
Or holiday companies shouldn’t be allowed to inflate prices during school holidays!
It’s always low income families that suffer - we all went on holidays and it never did us any harm. Family time & experiences are just as important as education if not more.
I agree Ruby, as a parent of two young children, it is despicable that companies are allowed to inflate prices during school holidays.
Organise schools to operate with 6 weeks fixed holidays and 6 floating weeks. Staff and pupils commit to years holidays to ensues. Pupil teacher ratios match.
Definitely should bring in a cap for company profits during school holidays. I wouldn’t normally suggest interfering with business in such a way, but with the Ofsted report suggesting home and school relationship needs to improve, this would definitely help.
I work in a school and I see both sides: I totally see why parents do it, but of course schools have to do something to show they don’t accept periods of non attendance.
I think we could implement the French system where the holidays are staggered by area. So say the south west could have a half term a week before the south east.
That way the demand is not localised to a single week but instead is spread out.
I am a father of two young children, what if, as a family we could take every other year off in term time in order to have a more affordable holiday. To be honest we cannot afford to go away every year anyway.
Essentially it’s a tax on families either way.
Regarding going away during term time and school fines, It may be the family only go away once a year or even every other year and the rest of the time the children have perfectly good attendance so it doesn’t make sense to penalise families for this when there is already a cost of living crisis and going on holiday is cultural enrichment for students.
Regarding hiking flight prices up during school holidays, I am definitely pro-business but this really does take the biscuit.
