Monday, May 26, 2014

Teachers' Pest

There is a current controversy about parents' right to take their children out of school to go on holiday. There are valid arguments on both sides, but my sympathy lies on the whole with the parents. The loss of ten days' teaching is unlikely to cause long term damage to a child's education, and there are many benefits to be gained from a holiday en famille. In addition holidays outside the peak period are substantially cheaper. Hitherto head teachers have had discretion to grant leave, but the rules have now been tightened.

I strongly dislike the idea of schools imposing fines - that is a job for the judiciary, not teachers.

Councils prosecute as a last resort, and those who are summonsed are likely to be serial offenders, rather than holidaying families. What is a court supposed to do when a bedraggled single mother comes in to tell us that young Bradley just doesn't like school? I recall one case when the mother delivered the boy into the classroom, and handed him to the teacher, only for the boy to slip out and take a short-cut home, arriving before his mother. Fining very poor people (especially these days with the unjust surcharge and heavy costs that we must impose) is unfair and ineffective. It often happens, too, that by the time a case gets to court the child will be just a few months short of the age at which they can leave.

On another subject, as the school year draws to a close, our local secondary schools have taken to closing down one day before scheduled, to avoid bad behaviour on the last day, that can run to criminal damage and near-riots. One pupil indignantly contacted the local paper to complain that the school's action 'disrespected' him. Well, sonny, throwing eggs and damaging school property isn't all that respectful either, is it?


18 comments:

  1. I would probably have more sympathy with holidaying parents if I thought the choice was a family holiday or no holiday at all. I suspect it's actually a choice between a nice holiday (2 weeks at disney world, Florida) vs a not-so-nice holiday (1 week in Sheringham).

    mkb

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  2. Anonymous John26 May 2014 at 20:41

    "On another subject, as the school year draws to a close, our local secondary schools have taken to closing down one day before scheduled, to avoid bad behaviour on the last day"
    Doesn't that just turn the penultimate day into the last day?

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    1. Yes it does, but if the kids don't know that until they're told not to go in, it gives them less time to plan how to cause trouble.

      I agree this does somewhat sound like a slippery slope, whereby as soon as everyone works out that the penultimate day is the last day, then schools have to close two days early. I wonder how far this will go!

      Incidentally, I agree with Anonymous below (26/05/14 at 20:54): hold the offenders to account, rather than close early.

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  3. Taking a child out of school for holiday causes disruption not only to that child but also to the other children in the class as the teacher has to recover old ground. That said I completely agree that schools, have no place in issuing fines - personally I'd rather they report all cases for prosecution and let the bench decide (if the prosecutor thought it justified the effort) - it would be a far better deterrent too. I know one affluent family who simply factored in the cost as part of their calculation on when to go! If there is a compelling story the bench could find reasonable excuse, or a trivial fine.

    As for your young man who has been disrespected - I have some sympathy there too. The law requires him to attend school on 190(?) days a year - yet apparently the school has, of its own volition, decided to change that for a bizarre reason which purely seems to redefine the last day to be day 189 not 190! Surely it would make more sense to introduce these young adult to the reality of causing criminal damage and breach of the peace - by pursuing prosecutions? Again a few examples would be a far better deterrent than moving the last day!

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    1. Maybe the young man who felt disrespected was one of those who do not cause trouble on the last day. Then he would seem to have something of a point.

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  4. Another unintended consequence of this is that as a Police Constable, although I know our force have written to the Education and Policing ministers to point out their issues with the system, the standing advice from our Professional Standards Department is that any officer fined for this will be subject to disciplinary action!

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  5. Jimbob that is how it should be. I expect police officers to be law-abiding in their private lives.

    More widely: we expect teachers, many of whom have school-age children, to be there throughout term. Imagine if your child's maths teacher was away for a week after half-term because it was cheaper to take holidays then than the previous week!

    And don't get me started on the people who blame the "holiday companies" or the travel agents because the hoteliers and the charter lines apply the law of supply and demand!

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    1. Surely, in this case, it should be proportionate. I work in a profession where even a minor criminal record for a driving matter would have consequence to my career. If I take my kids out of school for a week and am censured for it, it's unlikely to have a similar impact (although people would think me unwise with some reputational impact). Police officers should be law abiding, but in this case would they be treated differently to the rest of us and is that fair...

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  6. When I was a child (many years ago) I was regularly taken out of school by my parents to visit a twin town in Germany (this was in the late 50s, early 60s, at the beginning of twinning. This was regarded as a valuable educational experience, and my teachers prepared work for me to do whilst there, and I had to write a detailed account of the visit. When my own children were young, we often took them out of school (under the 10 day rule) to places that I considered gave them a valuable educational experience. We visited castles, industrial archaeology, nature reserves - all sorts of places. They, too, wrote records of the holiday. My grandson is about to be taken out of school to go on holiday. The rules now seem to imply (my daughter has researched this extensively!) that it is OK, with the headteacher's permission, as long as the child has a record of "regular attendance". As he hasn't had a day off school (apart form being ill when they wouldn't let him back the next day as he's been sick), we are assuming it's OK. We wouldn't do it in a GSCE year, and we wouldn't do it for a "beach" holiday. Oh, and my grandson has missed days at school due to teachers' strikes.

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  7. Has the world gone completely mad?

    No one has the right to a holiday abroad, even less to take a child out of school for one- uless there are some exceptional reasons. This is a problem for the chattering classes who want to have their nice foreign holiday. However, the law is a child should be at school. Unless this is so we would have complete anarchy. If we are preparing kids for life they have to be subject to rules. I have absolutely no sypathy for those who knowingly break the law.

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    1. On the other hand ...

      Has the world gone completely mad? It is (s7 of the Education Act, but it still would be even regardless of that) the *parents'* responsibility to secure education "either by regular attendance at school or otherwise".

      For my part - and that of my parents before me - "otherwise" can quite reasonably include mostly regular attendance at school with the odd termtime break for doing something more interesting. This way, by the time I'd finished school I had visited and explored every county in England (except Kent) and a good deal of France. My children got much the same education and are all the better for it.

      I've lost count of the number of times I was hauled before rather impolite meetings with headteachers/welfare officers etc etc only to tell them that this was *my* responsibility and if their unauthorised attendance stats were slipping then it was their own stupid fault for not authorising the absence.

      Heaven knows where I'd have been if they had the power then to fine me. A lot poorer I guess.

      Besides, it is practically impossible to get timely - or any - authorisation for a holiday from two different bosses and three different headteachers, so I gave up asking and just told them instead.

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    2. I take your point regarding the education of your child ultimately being your responsibility, but is it not possible to do all the things you describe outside of the school term, either at weekends or during the holidays?

      I appreciate things are more expensive during the summer holidays, but surely this does not make much difference to day trips?

      Finally, whilst you come across as a responsible and intelligent parent (at least from your post: clearly I don't know you!), there are other parents who might not be so responsible as to use their child's extra time out of school to further their education, and instead just use it to get cheap holidays with limited educational benefit.

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  8. Oh! This, I guess, the team had predicted:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10860292/Throwing-a-custard-pie-is-a-childish-prank-not-a-criminal-assault.html

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  9. A friend's son had to be out of school for about six weeks or so for medical reasons, although he was not confined to bed and capable of reading/writing, etc.
    His parents asked the school for some work so that he would not get left behind and met with the response "Don't worry, he'll soon catch up, it's no real problem"
    If this is true, why all the fuss about having a couple of weeks away? Or was it because the teachers were to lazy to help?
    Incidentally, when I was working as a shift engineer in the aviation business, it was very difficult to take leave during the summer holiday period due to the pressure of work; what happens then? No family holiday?

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  10. Taking 10 days off school may not have n effect on the individual pupil, but that's because the teacher spends extra time with them when they get back. So in fact each person in the class is probably losing 1/4 day's education as a result of selfish parents taking their kid to Disneyland when it's cheaper. You need to extend your thinking to "what if everyone behaved like this". Then in a class of 30 there would always be someone just back from holiday expecting extra attention from the teacher. I would rather send my child to a school where parents were punished for wasting the time of the rest of the class.

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  11. We are side stepping the real question: What about parents who take their children to Pakistan for about 2 months during term time? I understand that there are some communities in the UK where this is very common.

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  12. Who gets fined when the NUT go on strike, as they are apparently planning to do yet again?

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  13. Surely schools cannot impose a fine? Is it not the case that they can apply a fixed penalty, which if unpaid may result in an appearance before a court, which can impose a fine (plus a surcharge of course)?

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