However for a family probably still cheaper than going on the same holiday in the off peak than peak season. However as our children never attended school in the UK we never had that problem. Also living in a holiday destination helped.
According to the following you maybe right! I’m not sure Mr Plodd is correct but perhaps there is some ambiguity in the wording🤔. I’d pay the £80 and enjoy a great holiday😎. Fortunately I don’t have that problem .However for a family probably still cheaper than going on the same holiday in the off peak than peak season. However as our children never attended school in the UK we never had that problem. Also living in a holiday destination helped.
From August 2024, the fine for school absences across the country will be £80 if paid within 21 days, or £160 if paid within 28 days. This rate is in line with inflation and is the first increase since 2012.
In the case of repeated fines, if a parent receives a second fine for the same child within any three-year period, this will be charged at the higher rate of £160.
Fines per parent will be capped to two fines within any three-year period. Once this limit has been reached, other action like a parenting order or prosecution will be considered.
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Seems weird and unbalanced that criminals are allowed free to make room for parents who want to save money by going on holiday in off peak periods? Many parents simply cannot afford to take the family away on holiday in peak periods due to high costs. Also if I am not mistaken the UK may have more peak holiday periods than any other country?
Now you know why most of us started camping and caravanning with very young children. We couldn’t afford conventional holidays. No bank of mum and dad in those days🤪
BTW, my physiotherapist is SA. Been here 25 years and married a Brit. Her brother has lived in Holland last ten years. HMG will not give him and his family an entry visa to U.K. They wanted to come and see the family last Xmas.
Even our local MP couldn’t help.
Is there some reason SAs are treated this way?
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No idea, but it cost the daughter and her family over £10k for the paper work to emigrate to UK and both of them are in desired jobs, teacher and IT systems manager plus daughter is a British citizen.
Come on now have any parents been jailed for taking their children out off school without authority? That comment is worthy of Fox News. 😱
You might argue that police cells aren't the same as jail - but this story illustrates the risk https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co....said-spent-24-hours-jail-unpaid-school-fines/
It’s not just South Africans, friends of ours with family ties in Canada had real problems over a visit to UK. Could it be something to do with keeping numbers down so nett immigration figures look better?
Why would visitor visas count towards nett immigration? Or were they trying to get residential visas?
That’s an interesting article; the police were only doing their job in executing a warrant, but I do not understand why some people get themselves into such a position.
Mel
Moderator
Our grandchildren largely have 100% attendance at school except for the week that our daughter takes them out for a holiday. Even with potential fines it is vastly cheaper than paying school holiday prices. She has yet to be fined but would take it on the chin if she was. In addition travel broadens the mind and these are children who are read with and supported in education and get loads of informal learning through parental input. She is not impressed by any argument that says a week out a year is harming their education. Especially when their local school was closed due to a threat of snow which never actually fell 😂
I really don’t know, but with the hysteria over immigration government seems to have made it difficult for some categories of visitor to gain visas. I for one would remove students from immigration figures, but others could feel equally strongly against.
The Canadian case was their son who lives in Canada and has dual citizenship and is married to a Vietnamese girl. They wanted to come to Britain to visit his parents for a holiday too.
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Some people are better at managing their time and finances than others - it's not difficult to see that some people make awkward situations worse.
For what it's worth we always took our two children out of school in off peak times, but there were no penalties then. Likewise we took our grandson (now 32) and granddaughter who could receive a penalty, but the school gave permission in two consecutive years at secondary given her having to deal with autism.
Do you really need to be so pedantic so early in the morning as it was probably obvious to every one else that it was very tongue in the cheek?
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You would be surprised at the number of hoops you have to jump through to get a visa just for a holiday in the UK. When my son in SA applied for his visa for a visit, he had to demonstrate that he was employed in SA and has permanent residence. The latter was very difficult as he is a game ranger.
Each time it meant driving to Pretoria so a round trip of over 500 miles and had to do that twice and even then the visa was not guaranteed. Annoyingly, I am British, his grandfather was British, his great grandfather British and all our forefathers were British!
A dingy would have been much cheaper, no paperwork needed. 😅
Not every one can afford to pay fines? The offence would probably have been "Contempt of Court" and nothing to do with the fines itself.
Your post had none of your normal emojis, and has as been discussed on other threads discerning humour from reality doesn't always come across in the written word and readers comprehension is different.
Apologies if you were offended.
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Just to put my oar into this murky pool of unsanctioned absences from school for holidays. As a past governor at two schools, both primary and secondary we had various courses to do with attendance, and there is plenty of well founded evidence strom studies that shows how even bright children can miss out on most aspects of a planned curriculum by missing a week of work. Beyond that there is the fact that in many cases the whole class is affected becasue the staff often have to divert from the scheduled topics to bring the child who has been absent back up to speed. This is one of the reasons why legislation was introduced that allowed the schools to initiate the fines.
Schools are put under great scrutiny by Ofsted, and issues of unauthorised absences, cause lowered class attendance and attainment scores are both criteria that act negatively towards an Ofsted inspection outcome, - and it has been seen, how that can have serious consequences for the Staff and the whole school.
The idea that travel widens the child's life experiences is rarely upheld when holidays are investigated for educational worth.
Schools are put under great scrutiny by Ofsted, and issues of unauthorised absences, cause lowered class attendance and attainment scores are both criteria that act negatively towards an Ofsted inspection outcome, - and it has been seen, how that can have serious consequences for the Staff and the whole school.
The idea that travel widens the child's life experiences is rarely upheld when holidays are investigated for educational worth.
Things must have changed over the years, but my parents took me out of school for three weeks to go to Spain in the 1960's. I recall that the headmaster wasn't happy about it, but reluctantly agreed after my father said that he was unable to take time off work during the school holidays.
Things have changed a lot in the UK, to combat the number of unauthorised absences.
Probably though addressing quite the wrong issue, student "absenteeism" has its roots with far more fundamental issues than "pinching" a family holiday.
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In the
It was this restraint, and an abject fear of removing kids from normal term time, that lead so many families to camp and caravan.
You were very lucky Lutz.
In the 1960s we were only allowed to take £50 spending money to Spain per trip. Wouldn’t last long for a family of four, food wine etc, never mind entertainment for the kids.
It was this restraint, and an abject fear of removing kids from normal term time, that lead so many families to camp and caravan.
You were very lucky Lutz.
That must have been very early in the 60’s. I don’t know whether my parents were subjected to the same restrictions when they took me to Spain in 1963, but only a couple of years later in 1966 I drove on my own right up to the Arctic Circle and I’m sure I must have had more than £50 to do that even though I stayed at youth hostels on the way.
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