Fines for parents not sending children to school.
-
Posts
-
@Ferret 16548 wrote:
I think its wrong for the Council to say its ok not to send your children to school
Quite agree. The law is pretty easy to understand. It is all about the greater good of the child whilst balancing this with the obvious desires of the parents to make key choices about their children. That is why parents and children get to decide the best options for themselves in Year 10 or whether a faith school is more appropriate than a non-faith, and so on.
Aspects of the law have been applied with some flexibility in the past and there are always exceptions made for obvious things as they crop up. This is right. What is not right is that parents can merely decide to take their children from school just to take advantage of some Holiday Company happy hour. The schools apply the law with common sense and their are Holiday forms that can be submitted and approval (or not) obtained.
If parents don’t seek to adhere to the rules, then fine payments seem reasonable to apply and if Wrexham opt to apply the law as framed, no problem.
@Darlofan 16490 wrote:
It’ll only be the responsible parents who pay the fines, those that take the kids out for the last week of term for a family holiday. Those parents that can’t be bothered getting out of bed to take their kids to school and repeatedly ignore phone calls and letters about non attendance are hardly going to pay a fine and the council won’t chase it.
That should not be the case and I would like to see the stats on this. It has to be applied for all on the same basis
I am not generally in favour of taking children out of school for holidays, but sometimes it is the only opportunity that families have to go abroad on holiday. I do think that travelling abroad is of benefit to children. I only ever took my children out of school once and that was for a wedding, but on other occasions whilst on holiday they visited Ephesus whilst on holiday in Turkey, historical sites in Crete, the Florida Everglades where they fed chips to alligators and saw flamingos and pelicans in the wild, as well as a visit to NASA, which offered them a lot more than what they would learn from books. Holidays can and should be fun, but they can also be educational too.
If one of the parents is only be able to take a holiday out of term time due to the nature of his/her business, should children not be allowed to take a holiday with both parents? I don’t agree with children having time off school unnecessarily but there are such things as exceptional circumstances. Perhaps a 7 or 10 day leeway should be given per year based on those circumstances. After all there are outward bound breaks, skiing holidays, language trips to France or Germany & so on in term time.
There is another dimension to this tread which is that teachers have the right to ask for a holiday during term time and School Governors ca grant it. This is not often used but it is available and most parents would fined it difficult to accept a teacher going on an ‘approved’ holiday during what they would see is work time.
@johnhoppy 16556 wrote:
I am not generally in favour of taking children out of school for holidays, but sometimes it is the only opportunity that families have to go abroad on holiday. I do think that travelling abroad is of benefit to children. I only ever took my children out of school once and that was for a wedding, but on other occasions whilst on holiday they visited Ephesus whilst on holiday in Turkey, historical sites in Crete, the Florida Everglades where they fed chips to alligators and saw flamingos and pelicans in the wild, as well as a visit to NASA, which offered them a lot more than what they would learn from books. Holidays can and should be fun, but they can also be educational too.
We took the kids to Magaluf last year. That was an education.
Let schools use their common sense and discretion, there are always going to be cases that should be an exception to the rule!
@99DylanJones 16565 wrote:
There is another dimension to this tread which is that teachers have the right to ask for a holiday during term time and School Governors ca grant it. This is not often used but it is available and most parents would fined it difficult to accept a teacher going on an ‘approved’ holiday during what they would see is work time.
I honestly don’t think parents would notice. Teachers of my 2 are regularly off sick, meetings, training courses etc. There is not a fortnight goes by where 1 teacher(primary) will do every day.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
