Oooohhh the cheek!! I applied for ‘holiday’ leave on Friday for Jake so we can go to my cousins wedding this weekend. And it has been refused!! The letter says “Any absence from school will be marked as unauthorised and referred to the educational welfare service who may issue a penalty notice of up to £100”
I am fuming. What kind of person thinks they can have the power to stop me taking my child out of school for ONE day to attend a wedding FFS?
Ggggggrrrr

Of course we shall be going anyway. To hell with them. Sometimes home education looks like a really attractive alternative.

Is this normal, this kind of heavy handed, over the top control of absences? Or is this special to our control hungry headteacher?!

I think it is dependent on the head teacher to a degree.  I have broached the subject with the two head teachers we are involved with, one is more concerned with pupils attendance records than family needs, the other is far more sympathetic.  I just reckon if we take them out we may have to add a bit of extra money on to our budget to pay fines.  Not looking forward to next year when I’ll have three head teachers to contend with.

Hope you have a lovely time at the wedding.

Take him anyway and say he was ill! They’ll know you’re fibbing of course but if you say he wasn’t right, can they do anything about it?!

I have never had unauthorised leave but I know lots of people who have in the village school. They have told the head, had it unauthorised and still taken their children out of school and quite a few times too. They don’t get penalty charges though even though threatened with them. Strangely I don’tknow what happens in ds’s school.

I know what you mean about home ed though. I really love ds’s school for so many reasons but always feel like I am battling the system.

That’s awful. I am not surprised you are angry, but, try to relax and enjoy the wedding, don’t let it spoil your day out. xx

We had something similar to this when Freya was at primary school - very ‘up herself’ headmistress.

We actually complained to the board of governors as it was so unfair. The head had to back down in the end.

Why don’t you write a letter of complaint to your school board? Sounds so ridiculous - it’s a wedding for goodness sake! A legitimate reason for an absence in anyone’s book, surely!

weird this has come up. DD is going to secondary school in September and we had to sign a ‘home / school’ agreement - they went on and on about absences and how one day off can affect academic achievement. I refused to sign it (they wanted you to say you would do your utmost not to book time off during school) and sent in a covering letter saying we always have school time holidays and will continue to do so.

I’m quite looking forward to the head pulling me in and me pulling out my trump card which is 3 years of home education hasn’t adversely affected DD’s academic achievement (she’s pretty much top of the tree for most things)

No friggin’ way will I be paying a fine - I’d rather pull her out of school.

Hope you have a lovely time Rach and this is just scare / ego tactics

I phoned the council….to check what their take on the whole thing was. The person I spoke to said (off the record) that we should not be intimidated by the heads behaviour.  She said we should phone in sick on Friday. If the school decide to report us she thinks it will get precisely nowhere at council level and that they wouldn’t follow up a first time offence, especially if it is for a family wedding.

I am going to talk to DS1’s teacher tomorrow and explain that this is what we shall be doing!!

Quite tempted to write to the board of governors too though. As a christian school I thought they were supposed to support to institution of marraige

Power to your elbow!  Hope you do manage to write a letter of complaint.  Enjoy your weekend.

San x

Jeez, it’s a good job sadie’s school is always worried about numbers, we give her days off for all sorts of reasons and they might not like the fact that she goes to Spain for a couple of months at a time but the take it on the chin cos they’d rather have an open school with low attendance stats (we’re not the only ones…).
Today she’s been to the zoo with her visiting aunt, she held a python (or maybe it held her), I doubt she would have done anything more memorably educational at school today….and that’s the line I’ll take with the teachers in the morning…

our schools pretty good,as we have a large traveller community,dont really think they can moan much,as long as you’re fair about it,just as well,head gaskit went on the car this morn,as its a 5 mile country drive had to ring in ‘sick’ x

Yep, I’d deffo phone in sick

Yes we were told it would be put down as unauthorised when we took ours out for a two day holiday. Next year it will be a whole week as we are going to my dh brothers wedding and its abroad. They will have to lump it or I will just say the kids have flu for a week.

Just got sadie’s school report. Thus far she has been absent 111 days this year… I really ought to think about HE again shouldn’t I?

starchild - good on you for not signing that letter!

purplecavingcat - 04 July 2012 04:57 PM

I am going to talk to DS1’s teacher tomorrow and explain that this is what we shall be doing!!

Quite tempted to write to the board of governors too though. As a christian school I thought they were supposed to support to institution of marraige

Haven’t been around on the forum for a while - just popped on to reply to a pm and had a quick look and saw this post too.

Did you get to see the teacher about it?
I’m surprised there isn’t a system for agreeing to some time off - our school has a policy of agreeing to a certain amount of days each school year, but there is also scope for agreeing more in some circumstances e.g. a class friend of my dd had 3 weeks to visit family in India. I think (as our schools do) that time off with agreement is better all round.

We recently took dd out for a day to meet up with family visiting from Australia and there was no issue, the head wished her a fantastic day and asked her about it the next morning when we saw her on our way in in the morning.
Had it been an issue, or ever was in the future I would just do it anyway personally - our child, our decision.

Have a lovely day either way x