The Education Secretary of Britian, Michael Gove,has introduced new rules preventing schools from giving parents in England up to 10 days of discretionary leave
Parents can be issued with fixed fines and eventually taken before the courts for taking their children on vacation during school time.
Read More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/edu…-on-term-travel.html
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I see a lot of value in parents taking the effort to take their kids on a trip . Thankfully in my case, the teachers always worked with me as a parent and were very supportive.
In the schools i’ve been working in these past few years, we have identified when most kids miss school for that specific reason…and work with it Instead of against it. We do encourage parents to try to take vacations when school is out though.
As an educator, I’ve always found this a difficult issue. Teachers are often frustrated when students disappear for family vacations when they need to be completing their studies or taking final examinations, but I doubt that prosecuting parents is the solution. That is especially so when parents are not given a choice by employers: if this is the only time the family can take time (especially for immigrant families who use the time to visit families “back home”), it is understandable that they want to do so.
Our society is structured in a way that puts families under tremendous pressure this way, and the results unfortunately tend to pit parents against teachers, not to encourage them to find solutions for the family and the students’ education both.
Often we find that the problem is greatest for the working parents with the fewest resources: those working in low-wage service industries whose cycles don’t match those of schools. For instance, hospital workers have time off spaced through the year–no slow season, sadly–and workers in tourism-based industries are often most in demand at the very same time that their children are off!
I think the solution goes in two directions: First for parents to consider all other alternatives first, and second, for parents and school to plan far enough ahead that the students can be kept up with work and make up work. Parents are sometimes reluctant to let us know well ahead, and sometimes don’t even know very far ahead.