True - although there’s also the ol’ danger of conflating “education” with “schooling”…
4 Likes
As usual, the only proper solution is to whinge on message boards about rights versus responsibilities until we’re sated.
1 Like
You’re making it sound way more dramatic than it is. The parents found it more important to go to Disneyland than to have their kid attend school for a week. They were informed that they might be fined because attendance is mandatory. They were still able to go, were fined £60 and didn’t want to pay.
How unique of them to ignore the school’s concern about the kid’s education and not find a different holiday solution. 
If they can fly from the UK to Florida, they certainly would have had other options.
Including paying the damn fine.
Yet another argument for project-based learning. Currently school has to put a lot of weight into attendance, because in a system that is still leans heavily in the direction of rote learning (Tuesday = page 10 of The Textbook) that’s the most measurable input. It’s hard to measure output in a system like this (well, easy, if you really simplify the desired outputs, as we have with standardized testing). Life is nothing like schooling.
When I was a teacher, even though I had loads of time off, the fact that all my vacations were lockstep, and at the same time as all others really did grate on me. I have far less time off now, but knowing I can schedule it either when I need it, when I get an opportunity, or when my workload has lulled a bit feels much more appropriate. So much so that knowing it’s there is such a relief that I often end up not using much of it.
1 Like
It all seems to hinge on payment of the fine…I wonder if the state’s real concern is less about what may be best for children, and more about ensuring income for the local councils? (Sort of like traffic-ticket-writing quotas?)
from the linked bbc article:
11,493 X £176 = £2,022,768
I don’t think £2M is very much spread over the whole of the UK, not enough to fight court battles over the right to collect. The independent reported in 2015 that local councils made £700M on parking tickets. So I don’t think truancy fines comprise enough of the budget to really alter government behaviour the way traffic or parking fines do.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
