http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... World.html

Does this now set a precedent in circumstances where your child has been attending school regularly? It is certainly worth considering if you are facing prosecution for a term time holiday.

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In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Abraham Lincoln

I think it was ****** minded of him to pursue it in court. The fact is his dd still missed 6 days of school and went to Disneyland which is not exactly known for its educational value!

To be fair I don't think the ramifications are the same when the child is only 7 years old, as this girl is, but certainly when you have a year 10 or 11 kid being taken out of class for several days it is very difficult for teachers to set work and it takes up a lot of their time. I regularly had students being removed from class with little or no warning to travel to far off climes for two, sometimes three weeks because their parents could not afford the air fares in term time. My dd, currently in year 9, has a couple of friends who have missed masses of school to go to Australia, the Maldives....the mother was very open about it and said they were quite happy to take the fine as it would still be less costly than travelling in school holiday time.

I'm afraid I am rather old school in that IMO when you sign up for school you go to school. Of course there will be extraordinary situations when absence is necessitated, but generally speaking I think if you take your child out of school to swan off to Disneyland, you are taking the p**s.

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In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Abraham Lincoln

Good for him. 6 days missing in year 2 or 3 is really not going to make any difference at all to a child's education.

I find that my children's attainment improves during the holidays and sinks in term-time. Not quite sure what the DfE thinks that children are doing in primary school that one week in a year would make any difference at all. If they paid decent money for research which proved that they need to get their money back!

I completely agree with Mystery.
DD has just begun her first job as a primary school teacher and confirms that a few weeks here or there will not make much difference to a child who is usually keeping up. Parents need to ask the teacher for a copy of the missed lesson plans (which should be easily sent by email) and can then ensure that the teacher is not inconvenienced by having to help the pupil catch up on their return as they will have done the missed work easily enough whilst on holiday.

I was once told by DD2's year 3 teacher that missing the summer term would not harm her and indeed it did not!

A respected primary headteacher once told me that if the school is a good one, a week or so absence won't matter, and if the school is bad, it won't matter either

But I feel sorry for school leaders because Ofsted are very obsessed with attendance data and they could have their school and leadership downgraded because of poor attendance.

Yes - that's how it seems but is it true? My impression from reading around this - for a particular reason not because it is of great interest - is that Education Welfare Officers in the local authority seem to think this is the case and so do headteachers but I couldn't find much written down by OFSTED on the matter.

My impression was that if attendance was well managed and the data is interpreted well to the OFSTED inspector there should be no downgrading based on a headline figure for attendance alone. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Our headteacher used to state quite often that the school couldn't be judged as outstanding overall unless the attendance was above a certain percentage and demand that sick children were brought into school as much as possible but it appeared to be an urban myth to me.

Dh had 3 months off school when he was 11...his parents took the family on a round the word tour. They travelled through Europe & the US in a camper van, and visited places most kids will never see.
Experience of a lifetime. He finished high school with a record breaking score.. and went on to a top uni..as did his siblings. Certainly didn't do them any harm!

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In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Abraham Lincoln

I'm old school too.

I am pleased that there are still plenty of us about. Fine or no fine, school would be a very difficult place to manage if we all did what you propose does no harm - half the class was missing for up to a month (2 weeks each half) in June/July, which is when most parents would favour the cheaper trip to the Balearics or wherever.
May do no harm to individual children but the class as a whole, lesson planning, wasted time on catch up attention etc etc, does have an impact and is a PiTA. But it's a bit like not vaccinating your children, most get away with it because the rest of Us believe in maintaining the herd protection. School absence has little impact on your child or the class because the rest of us support the school and keep the numbers up to better assist the school and it's difficult job.