Holiday prices outside the school terms

[mattobrien]

Damn those holiday companies for making me have children and forcing me to pay more for my holidays

 

[Roadrider48]

Eh? Listen to yourself! "reliable families who want a quality holiday"? So those of us from poor working class families of old, whose holidays were on a shoestring, were deprived of genuine experience and memory? This is just bollocks - being at school is a brief part of a person's life, but crucial in so many ways (as those who bleat loudest about holidays being expensive in term time often like to proclaim). It's a relatively small thing to make a commitment to turn up at school when required to be there, and a valuable life lesson too, in that it's more important than a week on a beach or beside a hotel pool.

A holiday is essential! The best prices must be sourced and acted upon. Having a week or two weeks off does not hurt anyone once a year.

 

[400bhp]

A holiday is essential! The best prices must be sourced and acted upon. Having a week or two weeks off does not hurt anyone once a year.

Time off is the important thing, not necessarily where that time is spent.

You know, some of the more quality time spent with my 4 y.o has been cycling home from school.

 

[Roadrider48]

Time off is the important thing, not necessarily where that time is spent.

You know, some of the more quality time spent with my 4 y.o has been cycling home from school.

Agreed!

 

[summerdays]

[QUOTE 2899709, member: 45"]Annual holidays in term time are primarily taken in the last summer half term. It's uncommon for families to let their children start later in a new term.[/quote]
That isn't the case in the schools my children have attended, various different times were taken as holiday, though particularly the first and last weeks of any term.

Personally I don't see the problem with the younger end of primary school, but after that I think you shouldn't take holidays in term time. I think the way to form a possible solution would be for each school to have one or two weeks which they could choose where they fell (similar to the inservice dates), but preferably with schools in one area working together to choose the same dates. I know there will still be child are problems, especially for teachers from out of the area, but at least it would spread the demand.

 

[PK99]

Why the hell should we pay three times the standard rate for our holidays just because we don't want to take our child out of school? .

What is the standard price of a holiday?

A guy i know who runs a small travel business tells me he at best breaks even on what you would seem to be calling "standard rate" holidays, his business only works because of the profits made in high season.

What is the "standard" price of any seasonal product? Some (supply limited) things go up in price in the peak season (eg a hotel meal at Xmas), some (eg fruit and veg) go down when in peak supply, . The law of supply and demand is a pretty simple concept.

 

[gbb]

There is a myth among some parents that they can take kids out for up to 2 weeks. That in fact was a wartime concession allowing kids to see dad when he was home on leave. There is no right to take kids out of school in term time - period!

When I was a school governor the problems caused by taking kids out became very clear. Consider, say Maths, teacher introduces a new topic and develops that topic over two weeks. But Jonny and Suzie are in the Med for those two weeks and when they come back need extra tuition to catch up - often in the form of 121 tuition. Why should the school have to fund that extra tuition? Or should the school say "Tough!" and leave the kids to flounder? [In the case of illness absence such 121 tuition would be given as a matter of course] Other schools may have had different practices.

TBF I can relate to the above point re new topics. I had mumps as a kid and missed the first few lessons of algebra . NEVER got to grips with it, I'd missed the most important part.

 

[400bhp]

[QUOTE 2899805, member: 45"]Yup. We've had some fantastic, cheap camping holidays. We've had some abysmal Haven breaks. We usually go to Cornwall and if not camping genuinely struggle to pay the inflated accommodation fees for somewhere not filled with slot machines.

We could never afford to take the children to Disneyland. Though it's a fantastic holiday experience and would be a great memory for them, it's not the end of the world. But if by some unlikely windfall we could have managed it by taking them out of the wind-down weeks at the end of term then we would happily have done so.[/quote]
[QUOTE 2899805, member: 45"]Yup. We've had some fantastic, cheap camping holidays. We've had some abysmal Haven breaks. We usually go to Cornwall and if not camping genuinely struggle to pay the inflated accommodation fees for somewhere not filled with slot machines.

We could never afford to take the children to Disneyland. Though it's a fantastic holiday experience and would be a great memory for them, it's not the end of the world. But if by some unlikely windfall we could have managed it by taking them out of the wind-down weeks at the end of term then we would happily have done so.[/quote]
Are yiu advocating taking children out of school in term time?

 

[MarkF]

User has a point about the last term week, no teaching happens, didn't for me, doesn't for my kids, my mother didn't do any either.

I sent a polite letter asking the headmistress of my daughter's and youngest son's primary school asking to take them out a week before the summer break. I didn't just do it, I asked for permission. It was refused, fair enough. But the headmistress sent me an incredibly snooty and condescending reply, just a"no" would have been fine. A few months later and oh, how I laughed.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/head...f-term-to-go-on-sunshine-holiday-6659585.html

 

[gbb]

Time off is the important thing, not necessarily where that time is spent.

You know, some of the more quality time spent with my 4 y.o has been cycling home from school.

This is true. While the wife and I are forced to pay for taking holidays during term time...not because we have kids, but because she works in a school...when we did have young kids, caravanning, camping in the UK was fantastic. Probably safer, more relaxing, more to do for the kids, more likely to let them go do their thing alone, etc etc. If we had to take them abroard, we'd hardly dare let them out of sight, all they can do abroad is beach, occasional water park, odd trip maybe and hang around the hotel. At home , the options are infinately better for kids.
My kids all loved their holidays in Weymouth and Cornwall.

TBF, I have a foot in both camps. I agree it seems unfair to pay extra, i always have to, but its market forces, its nothing new and if you break down the cost of my last holiday..it goes like this.
£2600 for two persons, two weeks full board in a 4 star hotel in Alanya Turkey. That equates to £650 each a week, breakfast and evening meal, flights, transfers, parking etc etc. In a bloody good hotel (been there twice it was that good)...how cheap do you want it ? That represents reasonable money to me.

 

[swansonj]

When I was Chair of Governors at my last school, I had a big argument with everyone under the sun about this. We had a bad attendance record, driven by a few problem families. In fact, I only kept our school out of Serious Weaknesses by fiddling the figures (with the connivance of the Ofsted Inpsector I may say). So we needed to improve matters. But the proposed solution of zero tolerance for everyone, for me, targeted the wrong people - as said upthread, the families you want to improve aren't overly bothered by rules. We did get attendance up, but by working closely with the individual families.

The head argued that zero tolerance sent a good message about the importance of school and the discipline necessary for life, which several people here have echoed. And that's true where a family blatantly takes two weeks off in term time to get a cheap skiing holiday. But, for example, when the kids were junior age we once took two days off a school week abutting half term to allow a holiday in Morocco, part a Souk in Marakesh and part a Kasbah in the Atlas, and whilst doing this was not essential for their development, and perhaps we could have done it in one of the longer holidays, I think it's an impoverished view of education that doesn't see value in this.

But what really ticked me off was the Head, the Deputy, the Ofsted Inspector and the local authority all quoting "evidence" that kids who took more time off school damaged their education. The evidence showed no such thing, it showed that kids who have more time off school do less well. Well, big surprise, when the kids who have more time off are usually from more disadvantaged families and where education is less valued in the home life. But could I make them all see the difference between association and causation? Could I heck.

I think all local authorities have policies about when to use their powers to fine, and even the most stringent policies only fine when attendance drops below some threshold, and when it doesn't improve after warnings. So it may have value as sending a message, but it's of limited use with cynical middle class parents - keep your child's attendance reasonably high, take a week off in term time as unauthorised absence, and if they invoke the process, all you have to do is make sure they don't have any absences the next term and you wipe the slate clean.