Children going on holiday during school term time

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Our local news is covering children being taken out of school during term time to go on holiday because the prices are so high during holiday time.   What do you think?  

[LiskeardRich]

The two primaries and the secondary in my town announced their October half term in 2025/26 school year will now be 2 weeks.
A caravan park holiday for the new second week is £229. For the normal week of October half term the same holiday is in excess of £1000!

[Chris from Nailsea]

Further information on this topic, from the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page).

I won't quote from it here, to avoid distracting from the above poll.

CfN.

[Hafren]

If prices are higher at peak times, is it because the holiday locations are at capacity and therefore reducing prices would just cause first-come-first-served booking chaos? Or perhaps there is spare capacity but the market will bear the higher price so they charge it.

This is one reason  why I'm not convinced by proposals for shorter summer holidays and redistribution of holiday periods through the year.

I'm wary of "it did me/us no harm" arguments but here's one anyway! In the 1990s it seemed fairly normal for people to take holidays during term-time. This was mainly at primary school. At secondary school it required the head's authorisation, and only happened occasionally. We sometimes had authorised holiday leave for one or two weeks when I was at primary school, and I don't remember it causing major problems. The summer term is often slower-paced anyway! I can see it being more of a problem at secondary school, but the nature of primary-age learning, being less geared to exams etc, was such that a week or two off wasn't the end of the world.

[johnneyw]

I share a number of the experiences and opinions of Hafren in the above post. 
The end of summer term in what we called Infant and Junior School in those days was indeed rather less academically focussed than the rest of the year (although as a schoolchild I rather enjoyed it and would not have liked missing it).
I think there could be room for head of schools to grant (or decline)  leave from school if the parents can satisfactorily demonstrate that the experience will provide an educationally beneficial experience for the pupil....as for example, foreign travel can......but I can also see how this could open a whole can of worms.
Supply and demand will always cause price variations so shuffling holidays will still cause peaks and troughs but at least it might slightly reduce the extreme highs.

[ChrisB]

Holidays are cheaper in term time because they don't sell anywhere near as many.

So if they start to do ao, what will happen? Yup, they'll cost what they already do at busy times & the weeks that are quieter will be cheaper. It's a win-win for the holiday companies, as the holiday season will even off numbers-wise and every week will then cost the same (higher than the cheap ones do now)

[GBM]

Totally sympathise with parents taking children out of school to avoid paying excess holiday charges.
The education curriculum is massively different these days to that of 'my day'.
My wife has just retired from being a Teaching Assistant, and often remarks on how much more crammed the syllabus is these days.
Massive pressure on teachers for a class to reach certain levels/grades by a certain time.  As well as Ofsted inspections putting more pressure on staff.

[TaplowGreen]

My Father was a teacher/headteacher in Plymouth and Cornwall for over 40 years. There has always been provision for schools to use discretion in this area and I know he used to in cases where the child in question's Dad was in the services and often the option didn't exist to use school holidays as his ship was away or he was going on deployment etc.

The difference in those days was that parents generally asked first (this was prior to the age of entitlement in which we now live), and didn't rush off to the media to bemoan the situation if the answer was in the negative (it rarely was in the circumstances I described, all Dad's schools were heavily populated with service families).

All I would say to those parents who are planning to take Johnny out of school for an educational trip to Butlins/Benidorm during term time is to spare a thought for the other children who will have to have their own education slowed down in order to allow their own children to catch up on what they missed, and the additional work for the teachers involved.

Actions, as always, have consequences.

[rogerw]

Back in the early 1980s we could only afford to have holidays during term time.  It was always for 1 week only and the schools were happy provided you filled out the required form.  One teacher I spoke to held the view that one week visiting another area, even in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), was educational for the child.