County Durham teacher calls on travel companies to stop school holiday hikes
MPs debated unauthorised school absence fines last night
A County Durham teacher's calling on the Government to stop travel companies from massively hiking up prices when school holidays are on.
Nik Jones says he sympathises with parents who want to take their kids out of term time as school staff are affected too.
It comes as MPs debated a petition last night relating to a 10-day fine-free holiday allowance in term time.
He said: "We can't take holidays apart from school holidays and if you think about teaching assistants, office staff, cleaners, and kitchen staff, all of those people who aren't earning fantastic wages, who are also trapped having to take that time because they're not allowed holidays elsewhere so we absolutely sympathise with parents who want to do it.
"I think the fines system doesn't really work. It never really got to grips with the core problem here. The reason why parents want to take on holiday outside of the holiday dates is not because they want them to miss school, it's because they can't afford to do it at any other time and fining them doesn't really help. It makes no difference whatsoever.
"It does have an impact taking children out of term time, particularly if it's going to be for a week or a couple of weeks at a time, they can miss an awful lot of learning. Some people in the scheme of things might think two weeks isn't a huge amount but it really depends on the stage they're at. I've met kids where they've missed a couple of weeks two years ago and when it comes back around towards exams they suddenly find themselves in a bit of a panic.
"The problem is from my point of view as a teacher is how does the 10 days actually work? Am I going to have a rolling number of students that are off right away through the year constantly? One or two students down all the way through the year? Am I going to get, when it's starting to get warm in May, all of a sudden 50 percent of the class have all decided to trigger the 10 days at that point?
"Whilst we're not exactly against it, the practicalities need to be thought through with some detail I think to make sure that 1. We are making sure that any loss learning can be caught up 2. We're also making sure that these children are safe, we know where they're going and 3. How as a school do we manage that? How does that impact on my workload?
"The real problem here is not parents wanting their kids to miss school, the real problem here, and what the Government should be doing about this, the easiest possible fix, is to simply stop travel companies chucking their prices up three, four times as much just because the school holidays have kicked in. There you go, do that and all of a sudden there's no reason for parents to want to take their kids outside of the school holidays."
Chelsea lives near Saltburn with her three kids and she said: "I've taken mine out of school on multiple occasions. Generally it's only Monday to Friday just for a week or just for a weekend. I haven't been fined personally myself but I'm on my third warning for it.
"I did find it a lot cheaper. If you look at the same holiday for when the kids are in school to when they're out of school, it can be triple if not more of the price. A lot of parents don't have that money.
"Schools really need to take a look at children's mental health as during school time that might be the only holiday they're able to get that year and if the parents are getting fined, then that could be three years worth of holidays that they can no longer go on because they're having to pay off the fine.
"I just think they do enough schooling in their life that 10 days isn't going to make a difference. I don't think it impacts their education. I think, if anything, they'll learn more as long as it's not an important time like exams then I don't see the problem."