PARENTS the land over looked on in terror last week when the Supreme Court ruled that those who take their children out of school for holidays during term time can be prosecuted.
Judges ruled that dad Jon Platt, who took his six-year-old daughter on week-long holiday to Florida in 2015, should have paid a fine for her unauthorised absence and indeed, displayed a 'blatant disregard of school rules', by taking her to Florida during term time.
The verdict means that parents who take their kids from school for a term-time holiday, even if that child has impeccable attendance, can be prosecuted if they don't get permission from the principal.
I personally have never taken my kids out of school during term time – I swear to God, officer. This is not so much so much the result of any strong moral stance and more I'm terrified of their principals. The memory from my own teen years of sitting outside the principal's office sweating, biting my nails and imagining the beige walls are closing in on me is not something I want to relive.
But I do know parents who have taken their kids from school to head off on holidays. They didn't bother asking permission from the school; they say they didn't want to risk being turned down. The prospect of a week at Disneyland Paris at a third of the price was too tempting a proposal to turn down. They have lied about the kid being sick, had a blanket ban on smug holiday posts on Facebook, a ban of chatting about the holiday to anyone inside the school environment and just headed off into the sunset.
Disneyland Paris is packed to the rafters every week of the month, every month in the year, even on school weeks. I've no doubt that it is wall-to-wall kids with tonsillitis or a bad tummy bugs from all over the globe, God love them. Mickey Mouse positively depends on those fevered children for survival.
I can definitely see where the educational experts are coming from. If everyone took their children off to Italy for a week during school time there would certainly by chaos in our classrooms. But most parents, regardless of how much they earn, are poor due to having to feed, clothe and put a roof over the heads of their many ungrateful and perpetually hungry children. A ruling in favour of parents being allowed to take their kids on holiday during term time wouldn't have, I'd imagine, resulted in an epidemic of families jetting off on four holidays a year and therefore I feel it is to harsh.
Parents want the best for their kids and that means a good education. Even if the ruling had been favourable to term-time holidays I'd say most parents would wait until the school holidays commenced to jet off to Bundoran or Benidorm.
Generally parents I know have taken the kids from school in the last week in June before the school holidays. Everyone knows that this is the week when nothing is done bar watching DVDs and having the craic with your mates while your poor teacher crawls on their hands and knees towards the summer holidays.
Educational experts will say that taking the children away disrupts progress, even those with excellent attendance and exceptional reports from school. If that is the case, perhaps strike days – which I fully support, by the way – in-training days, polling days, study days and other days that close the entire school do the same? These can add up to seven or eight days in the year – that's a week in sunny Spain.
Hard-working parents take their kids from school during term time because once the bell goes on the last day of school, before the kids swinging their bags around their heads like lassos have made it home and before the first blissful glass of chilled wine has been consumed by hard working, battle-weary, knackered teachers, holiday companies have quadrupled the price of their holidays.
Instead of fining the parents, perhaps the government could police the holiday firms charging four times the price for exactly the same product. Surely there is a consumer law covering such matters?
I understand an example was made of Mr Platt to scare the life out of parents about taking the kids out of school. In doing so the judgment was taken out of the hands of parents. It was taken out of the hands of principals, who are probably the best people to decide if taking a child from school would be detrimental and whether serial term time holidaymakers must be curbed. We seem to live in a society where there is no longer any room for discretion and common sense and we must all be governed harshly for the actions of the worst among us.
Does the government know how hard it is to raise kids? If you ask me, they should be paying us to go on holidays and indeed paying for the holidays. I'm signing off now to send an email to Theresa May.
