Should parents be allowed to take kids out of school for a holiday?

A question about : Should parents be allowed to take kids out of school for a holiday?

Poll started 21 Jan 2014

Last week, a couple were fined for taking their children on a term-time family holiday without the school’s permission. Headteachers can grant leave in exceptional circumstances, but it’s unlikely for a holiday and holiday prices soar in school holidays. Should term-time holidays be allowed?

Should parents be allowed to take their kids on holidays during term-time? Which of the options in this week's poll is CLOSEST to your view?

Vote in this week's poll

Did you vote? Why did you pick that option? Are you surprised at the results so far? Have your say below. To see the results from last time, click this

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Best answers:

• One issue is that some parents can't take leave during school holidays easily.
  This is the most popular time to book annual leave, and there needs to be some workforce remaining! Should this mean that only parent's are allowed to take leave during the summer months? Or should this mean that those that can't take leave are denied a holiday with their children or at all? I think that both of these scenarios are unfair.
• My wife and i both work and i struggle to get time off during the set school holidays. We wanted to take them to Florida but the difference between the last two weeks of the holidays and the first week of term is over Ј1000.
  We took them to Cyprus two years ago where we toured a local Roman ruin. Back in school our daughters class were learning about Romans and she was the only child to have seen some of the things in real life. They have also been up a volcano, another thing discussed in school.
  It is important to do well in school, but it is also important to have strong bonds with your family, and holidays help create memories.
• Wouldn't it be easier if holiday companies weren't allowed to double or even treble their prices in the school holidays? We don't get any more or better services than if we stayed a week earlier or later. It is just unfair. My kids wouldn't get a holiday if we had to go in school holidays - we just couldn't afford it.
• I've just read the comments on Facebook and a lot of people seem to be saying that the travel industry should stop ripping people off. While I agree that it is very frustrating, this will never happen. The travel companies - for example Thomas Cook, Thomson, Co-Op Travel, or anyone who is ATOL Protected - don't own all of the hotels, or all of the planes. They have to make a profit based on what they can buy the holidays for. So what you're asking is for all of the hotels, and all of the airports, and all of the flight companies and everyone in the tourist industry in the whole entire world to agree to charge a flat rate that is not variable on peak and off peak times. Clearly this is never going to happen.
  Teachers have many targets and their careers rely on exam results. So it would be unfair to allow children to be off school at critical times or for extended periods.
  However, holidays can be educational and I agree that children should be allowed to go on a 2 week holiday with their families during term time. As long as the teachers agree in advance that it is not during a critical point, and maybe give some extra work, or ask for a written holiday report in return, there should be no problem with this.
  I'm not a teacher, parent, or employee of the tourist industry.
• My wife is a college teacher. When a child is taken out of college during term time to go on holiday she has to help the child get back up to speed with the course in her own spare time. Despite public misconceptions, she works enormously long hours when you factor in evening work, marking etc. She needs a life, and not one spent grafting to help kids catch up so their parents can have a cheaper holiday by pulling kids out of college during term time
• Children need structure and taking them out of school for a week or two will be detrimental to their progress. It will also be stressful on their return when they find they cannot do the work due to missing out some key information. If the teacher goes back over this work with the individual, the rest of the class then miss out.
  My wife is a teaching assistant in a school and although she doesn't earn anywhere near a teacher, we can still only take our holiday out of term time, paying higher prices in the process. Even though we end up paying more, I believe that current set term dates is correct, anything else would be mayhem.
• As a former teacher I have experienced times where, in a class of 30, 4-5 children were missing for 1-2 weeks over a period of about 6 weeks, all for holidays. They may miss the start of a new topic and planning was difficult knowing that, especially in May-June, so many children would miss 1 or 2 weeks schooling. Whilst I sympathise with parents, I think that a better solution would be a total overhaul of the school term dates - maybe schools in different areas having different holidays with overlap between adjacent areas. Could be a nightmare for exams though!
• For those parents of school children voting in favour, are you OK with your child/ren's teacher taking holidays in term time?
  Also, do you expect your child/ren's teacher to spend additional time with your child/ren getting he/she/them up to speed with what they missed?
• i would understand it if the school was a grade 1 - they could state the kids were missing an education -
  but even then - kids are educated at home - the law does not barge in there does it - in any case rich kids on set for acting have tutors - why can't the school provide learning packages - and in any case - online teaching will soon be the norm wont it?
• We used to take our two children on holidays abroad in September when it was cheaper but since they started school we can't afford the flights in school holidays, so we have holidays at the seaside in the UK.
  I think it's much more important for them to be there for their education than to have a week or two in the sun. They both hate missing any school at all, even for music exams or illness, because it's hard to catch up. I wouldn't contemplate deliberately removing them from school for a holiday, even if the alternative was no holiday at all. There were years when I was little when we didn't have a holiday and I thought nothing of it. I don't understand why a holiday abroad seems to have become an 'essential'. (These problems never seem to be about a couple of weeks in Skegness.)
• I have no choice in the matter seeing as I have two children and my other half is a teacher. WHat I do find very annoying is that we have booked a cottage in Brittany and the nearest Airport is Rennes which in the first week of July costs Ј32pp each way, however when I look for our selected dates in August it jumps to Ј165pp each way!!
• Holidays during term time should be avoided at all cost, disrupting a child's education is a bad idea. I have children and have never taken them out of school for a holiday, they're now at top universities, would they have got the same results had I disrupted their education every year to take them away? Maybe but maybe not. A child's education should be the most important thing, it sets the path for the rest of their future.
• I work in a school but am not a teacher. I voted that children should be able to have holidays in term time but up to a strict maximum and not at a crucial time. I think the key point is "crucial time" as I know there are times in the year, normally the last week of term when they are likely to miss very little but normally missing the start of term makes it much harder to catch up. I also think that years 10 - 13 are key and therefore holidays in term time impact far more on students' results. The case in the press recently involved a year 10/11 girl who had missed a lot of schooling already and I was sympathetic with the authorities who had taken the family to court.
• Fair enough seven-day-weekend - although I meant more a 5 minute show & tell to the class rather than something that would need official marking, or worksheets that the parents could be given the sheets of answers to. Of course, this depends on how responsible the parents are!
• I never had this problem because we couldn't afford to go on holiday when I was a kid.
  Cry me a river!!!
• Hopefully in the future local authories will have more control over when the school holidays are and in turn each area will have different times off.