“Dear Principal Dude, Noggin was totally absent from school due to the gnarly surf at the EAC!”
Now, that’s a sick note.
5 Likes
About the only thing that kept me in my school during the 90s was the threat of my parents getting punished. I remember there being a high profile case where someones parents were taken to court because of repeated truancy around that time.
I used to love learning (I still do), but I hated my school. I had a nervous breakdown because of bullying and they didn’t do anything. I had a second during my A levels and they kicked me out (This time it wasn’t directly because of bullying, the bullies had all left because their GCSEs weren’t good enough).
8 Likes
It was made without considering anyone except the parents themselves.
It took into consideration lots of people. The people at the airline, the resort, the various people involved in travel, all of both of the parents co-workers…
It didn’t take into consideration that the headmasters rights are greater than those of every member of the community. I guess it better now.
I suppose headmasters are the best fit to determine when a family can go on a vacation. I know you’d be glad to ask your local principal if you could go somewhere nice, with your kids, on the week your boss gave you to take off.
Maybe you can get your employer to coordinate with the school, if you use the company legal counsel maybe you could even convicne them to let you leave town after a half-friday sometime, get a jump start on all the other families he made wati until after school…
How about educators educate, are prepared for disruption of schedules (this is 2017), and don’t expect perfection/ punish uniqueness?
3 Likes
“He said the decision, over a trip to Florida, meant the “state was taking the rights away from parents”.”
He’s lost me here. Parent’s don’t have rights with respect to their children, only responsibilities. I’m also not impressed with a claimed attendance rate of 92%. That’s close enough to every-other friday off. That’s a pretty poor record and one that would be unacceptable to a typical (future) employer.
2 Likes
Yeah, this pretty weak. I agree with the you on the narrow definition of “life chances” that is implied.
I’d also wonder what the “evidence” is. I’d not be surprised to find a simple correlation of attendance record with academic scores. But this would be just scratching the surface of what’s really going on.
2 Likes
Maybe she works a 9/80 schedule? 
2 Likes
I am helping someone who is doing A level physics. Last school year they had no physics teacher for months and the head of science was absent for months through ill health.
I would have sympathy for this argument if the Government funded schools properly with good teachers, but too many classes have supply teachers and are marking time. Are the politicians responsible for education being fined for failing to ensure children are properly educated?
Sauce, goose, gander.
2 Likes
“How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat”!
1 Like
They are responsible, i’d say many of the policies here in the various US states as far as schools go is highly negligent. But politicians are greasy worms that will easily avoid getting into trouble for slashing education budgets.
Seems little more than a matter of the state believing they know better than parents what is best for their children and punishing people who disagree.
2 Likes
Conservatism/Libertarianism is child abuse, so sounds like a good idea to me. Less bigots, better society, win win all around.
Sure, if you like creating a generation of people who don’t question authority and believe the state knows what is best for them. Of course, once the state decides people from/with X are bad, that generation will happily go kill them for their parent state. But hey! That’s not bigotry, it’s jingoism which is fine right? Nothing bad has come from nationalism and authoritarianism right?
2 Likes
like peanut butter and chocolate, those two. Irresistible!
3 Likes
That would maybe be true if we weren’t dealing with the likes of these arseholes
1 Like
She’s an attorney.
1 Like
And the highest German court in 2006 and 2014. And the European Court of Human Rights, also in 2006 (confirming the decision of the German constitutional court).
I just read that the ECHR will soon decide another German case, but my understanding is that the plaintiffs have not really new and better reasons.
all Brits are mindless zombies controlled by the government, a well know fact.
1 Like
I really don’t know what I think about this issue; education’s important, of course, but I think the Government is considerably overstating the disruption. My gut feeling is that I’d just factor-in a £60 fine as part of the cost of the holiday and go without a further thought.
Two point to throw into the discussion:
- The margin by which travel companies bump-up their fees during scheduled school holidays is appalling. In many cases families can’t afford to go at the officially-sanctioned times. And personally, I think holidays are a valid part of a child’s education.
- Tourism is a major industry in the UK: many parents need to work during the designated school holidays; taking time off themselves just isn’t an option in those periods.
6 Likes
Quite right. The Government has evidence of that, and I wouldn’t dream of questioning the Government.
1 Like
I recall friends going on vacation in the middle of the school year. Sometimes for much longer than just a week. It’s doable as long as there’s a clear plan of action from the parents to stay on top of everything.
If i had a really damn good deal to go on vacation on the cheap and had a kid i would consider it as well.
1 Like
Years ago my son and I were confronted by truant officers outside of the British Museum in London. My first thought was it was some kind of scam. My second: there are really such things as truant officers? (They had uniforms and everything.) They let us go when we proved we were American tourists (our school holidays and those in the UK don’t match up).
I milked this story for years, until I got an explanation from a friend who was a British social worker. Apparently it is (or was) quite common for parents, especially single parents in urban England, to force their kids to stay home from school to keep them company. Most of the enforcement was not of kids skipping school on their own initiative, or of happy families going on holidays, but of lonely mums not taking their kids’ schooling seriously.
I assume all the official UK statements mentioned above on the importance of not missing class - statements which seem unnecessary and even strange to US ears - are a reaction to what is apparently a common problem there, and an attempt to convince parents to not do that.
As for the general issue of mid-term vacations, I run into this occasionally as a university professor: a student tells me that her family is planning a holiday that will cause her to miss a week of classes. My policy on this is: (a) I don’t take attendance, so no problem there; (b) It is her responsibility to find notes on what she missed, as I often do things not in the textbooks; © If there is an exam scheduled while she’s gone the resulting problem is hers, not mine; my exam schedule was posted early in the semester.
6 Likes
