Term Time Holiday Ban

[sarahc]

Wait a minute. Electricity bills aren't optional? How about hearings at the magistrate's court?

 

Not compulsory, but a great way to catch up with old friends. Facebook for felons.

[GD4ELI]

Who said anything about it being a foreign holiday?

Lee54 did

[La_Dolce_Vita]

By taking them out you're sending a message to your children that school is optional.

 

 

And teaching them that anything else they might not be so keen on can be optional too: dentist appointments, exams, getting to work on time, rent, electricity bills, etc.

 

I do disagree on this point. The whole regime of schooling is such that it instills a sense of it being compulsory anf important in the child. So I don't feel this idea is weakened at all by taking the kids away for two weeks. More importantly, the hierarchy of authority over the child is such that the decision to take the child out of school is made by the parent, and in the eyes of the child the parents has supreme authority over their life. It does not mitigate the recognition of schooling being compulsory, when the kid goes back to school they know to be there.

 

Things we are not too keen on we have an adversity to because they are unpleasant or seem unjustified. If schooling is like that then there is a problem with the education system. I believe there is already, but I won't go into my politics deeply. But if we are going to send kids away from 9-4 to be stuck in the same room and same building day in and day out I am not surprised kids are not keen on it. It might instill a sense of learning in respect of learning about the regimented, authoritative, and de-humanising nature of most paid work today then I can understand. But de-humanising people is not a good thing. Although it is not a good in terms of the childs education, truancy is understandable from my perspective. But I think that a nice holiday is a welcome respite from boring schooling.

 

But if you miss your dentists appointment your teeth get fucked, if you miss an exam you fail, if you come to work late you get in trouble, if you don't pay your rent you are on the streets (wrongly in my opinion), and not paying utility bills means you no longer receive gas or electric.

[Lee54]

A lot of you are making a big deal over this issue, many say its disrupting the rest of the class, they wont be able to catch up if they lose a couple of weeks. The DOE give all sorts of figures on the amount of school days lost. But wait a minute, the DOE are also saying that more pupils than ever are passing their exams. Must be the holidays they take, it refreshes their minds ready for another spell of hectic school work.

[Tugger]

A lot of you are making a big deal over this issue, many say its disrupting the rest of the class, they wont be able to catch up if they lose a couple of weeks. The DOE give all sorts of figures on the amount of school days lost. But wait a minute, the DOE are also saying that more pupils than ever are passing their exams. Must be the holidays they take, it refreshes their minds ready for another spell of hectic school work.

 

Christ's sake, your parents must have taken you out for the best part of every term

[manxlennie]

OK

 

Schooling or school is not compulsory.................Education is !!!!

 

Children do not suddenly stop learning or become disadvantage educationally if they miss school, they just learn different things that, may or may not be, in the eyes of "whoever " deemed beneficial to their learning.

 

Being able to punctuate or spell correctly although important to some isn't to others.

 

An education is

 

1. to prepare the children for life in modern civilised society, and

2. to enable them to achieve their full potential.

 

Education is ‘suitable’ if it primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so.

 

 

Therefore missing a few days or weeks in a school term will not cause a huge dip in a learning curve.

 

It will however cause logistical problems if parts of the syllabus are missed etc which I am sure any concientious parent is aware of.

 

Also, has any one actually thought about how this will impact the emergency services personel who have children and all need to take leave at the same time, which rules out TT, BTW.

 

Anyone who actually believes that a child will suffer because of holidays has no understanding of learning at all and it is just as well they do not think that taking them on holiday in term time is beneficial, as their children are obviously at a disadvatage with such ignorance.

 

Maybe the problem is in the defintion of holiday.

 

 

ML

[Bombay Bad Boy]

Or maybe not..

[thebees]

Very gracious of them.

[Snaipyr]

Wow - another U turn. Power to the People!

[Gladys]

Wouldn't you think that this lot would be fed up of making brave statements and then immediately backing down?

 

Serial U-Turners, the lot of 'em!

 

This kind of thing seems to be happening so frequently now - residential care, all-island speed limit and now this. Who is making these 'policy statements' and then reversing? Are they really 'policy' decided at ministerial level, or are the civil servants deciding what should be policy only to be knocked back when the relevant minister sees what has been done and the public dissatisfaction that follows?

 

Either way, they are symptoms of a weak government machine.

 

As for this particular matter, I agree that children should only be kept away from school in exceptional circumstances and should not be done lightly, but on the other hand, I do understand that taking holidays during the school holidays can be prohibitively expensive, particularly when you add on the premium of living on the island which involves an extra £500 plus for us, as a family, to position ourselves in the UK to take a foreign holiday.

Repeated as no-one seemed to take up the point that the number of recent u-turns is a bit of a worry. Either the (any) policy is believed right and should be kept despite protestations because, ultimately but possibly painfully, it will deliver benefit, or it should have been properly considered before being adopted.

[WilDDog]

or it should have been properly considered before being adopted.

/Me "nail on head".

[Cronky]

Repeated as no-one seemed to take up the point that the number of recent u-turns is a bit of a worry. Either the (any) policy is believed right and should be kept despite protestations because, ultimately but possibly painfully, it will deliver benefit, or it should have been properly considered before being adopted.

 

I wonder how many of these bad policies (flouridation, old peoples homes, holdiays etc) are dreamt up by civil servants copying the UK. The 'Term Time Holiday Ban' was a 'cut and paste' from the UK. No thought was given to the differences over here. This is the odd bit - it didn't sound like an idea the Minister had thought of. I don't suppose we'll ever know the ins and outs of this. But I do think that, to say the least, she was very badly advised.

[Grianane]

I wonder what the real problem is, is it actaully the number of children taken out of school for a week for a holiday or is t=it the number frequently missing for 1-2 days. The Dept should publish the stats for approved holiday days, illness, and just not there, together of course with the numbers of pupils sent home and the number of schooling days lost.

 

We've taken kids out for a week holiday, its a big decision and you worry like hell about what they might miss, we've even got work to take with us to avoid them falling too far behind, they must cause some disruption on their return if they've missed lessons.

[Thinkinghard...]

I agree this has been blown up out of proportion. Tired of hearing parents moan about it actually.

 

Surely when you choose to have children you consider the extra costs of doing so. Why do families have to go abroad?

 

Single mother I know with 5 children is moaning because it will cost her an extra £1K to go in school holidays! Why have 5 children then!!!!!!!

 

I am also sick of the fact that we can never get time off work during school holidays because the parents insist on having them.

[manxlennie]

For people who are against the ban

 

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/no-more-h...ys-in-term-time

 

 

ML