Gove to ban term time holidays.

[laserblazer]

Gove to ban term-time holidays - Yahoo!

 

Meanwhile MPs can attend parliament as they see fit>

[featured_spectre]

This has been coming for a long time...but to counter this, the PM said he would crack down on extortionate pricing from holiday firms.

[glennda]

But most of the schools I have worked in have only sanctioned holidays when needs require such as going abroad for family funerals etc

 

Which it will now just make schools look bad and ruin the parent-school relationship which every school works so hard to try and build when for a genuine reason such as funerals etc are not allowed.

 

Toby

[laserblazer]

The argument the travel people use is that they don't inflate prices during holidays, they just discount them at other times!

[featured_spectre]

uhhh not according to the watchdog report last year. They said they increase prices the week prior to the first week of school holidays and lower it the week after the last week of school holidays, due to "demand" the price goes up, as they "have to employ more staff", but again watchdog secret filming thing at a few holiday destinations in Europe and UK proved the same level of staffing regardless of if it is school holidays or not.

 

It has been a "standard" practice for the last 30-40 years or so, but even the Government have said its ludicrous to pay up to 5x the cost of a holiday just because it falls within certain weeks of the year, hence the alleged clampdown in pricing.

[Michael]

The argument the travel people use is that they don't inflate prices during holidays, they just discount them at other times!

 

It's so very true, however the biggest difference is Christmas/New Year. Ticket prices from January 5th to around January 15th are 1p compared to a typical cost of £300 just before Christmas. It's all supply and demand really.

 

I don't think is one the Government will win unless they introduce some real laws and not just a strong 'recommendation'.

 

It reminds about another discussion - smoking in cars with children. I don't condone this at all, but how are they going to police it? If the Government were that bothered about stopping people smoking, they'd remove it off the shelves completely and force people to buy it on prescription.

[PiqueABoo]

Which it will now just make schools look bad and ruin the parent-school relationship which every school works so hard to try and build when for a genuine reason such as funerals etc are not allowed.

 

Stopping funeral attendance etc. would make this issue go NUCLEAR and no one sane will do that. That said I expect there are some schools that are sufficiently Kafkaesque/stupid/incompetant/up-their-box-ticking-backsides to do it.

 

--

Once upon a time 'between jobs' I had to do a 5 hour drive from my dying mother's side, sign a bit of Job Seekers paper here at home, and do then immediately do the five hour drive back. This was in order to avoid being kicked off benefits and have to start a fresh claim which would have have some very seriously financially and family damaging side-effects. Took it to the area managers etc., but they sympathetically said they just couldn't find a way to get around the tick boxes, let me sign something later or in a neaby office etc. Fortunately both my self-control and mum hung on for a day longer than this took , but I've never ever had more sustained and viciously dark thoughts than on that day... you just don't mess with folk in these kind of circumstances.

[glennda]

Stopping funeral attendance etc. would make this issue go NUCLEAR and no one sane will do that. That said I expect there are some schools that are sufficiently Kafkaesque/stupid/incompetant/up-their-box-ticking-backsides to do it.

 

 

Maybe its just the way Gove is being portrayed in the media but some of the policies he seems to be coming out with are all very nice ideas but practically half of them seem to be unrealistic.

 

The up to two weeks are designed for funeral's and the such like as mentioned in the article. If schools are not allowed to say this is authorised then it will just mean that for these authorised absences will become unauthorised and therefore ruin attendance records.

 

Yes this is aimed at schools which allow this time for holidays but they those schools should be penalised in a different way rather then cutting something which a lot of schools do not do anyway. The heads/deputy's which are pressurised by parents to allow this just need to grow a backbone in my opinion.

[PiqueABoo]

The heads/deputy's which are pressurised by parents to allow this just need to grow a backbone in my opinion.

 

Agreed, although at Primary age I don't actually think it matters that much if they miss a few days in school, or at least it certainly wouldn't for Sprogette who's one of those youngest in the class on top tables etc. She's possibly the only one in her class who hasn't had any term time off for holidays, because we can't simultaneously get mum, a teacher, off school.

 

I'm not expecting anything too silly on this from the DfE, but there is very serious stuff at the heart i.e. how far the state runs your life, makes you do "what's good for you" based on sod-all evidence. Pity no one is saying anything about homework so we can have a proper debate about that, especially reigning in the advance of Primary homework because in my life that is both significantly harmful and largely useless, unlike almost anything else we choose to do with our child in our limited amount of joint 'family time' including just playing games and messing about.

[glennda]

Agreed Primary homework is a joke - and also the way they seem to do maths is complicating simple things. I was helping my nephew with his maths homework about 6 months ago which he didn't understand with the way they where being taught (was something to do with division). I showed him they way i was taught in Primary school (about 12 years ago!) which he understood straight away!

[laserblazer]

I got a note in my daughter's planner "Please do not show her your way of doing long division". The fact that she understood my method was irrelevant.

[PiqueABoo]

the way they seem to do maths is complicating simple things. I was helping my nephew with his maths homework about 6 months ago which he didn't understand with the way they where being taught (was something to do with division). I showed him they way i was taught in Primary school (about 12 years ago!) which he understood straight away!

 

Mmm.. couple of weeks ago during the 1/2 day of the weekend it takes to get all the homework done having...

 

a) Taught a literacy lesson they haven't had at school yet that was a pre-req for the Sam Learning exercise they'd been given for homework.

 

b) Helped get her on track with a seriously inappropriate maths puzzle which required either a computer program or manual brute-force via ~60 separate, reasonably nasty bits of arithmetic to complete.

 

..we had some division. Sprogette, 8.5yo, is there going around the houses working out the answers in some offically approved manner that *in theory* prevents a very small percentage of kids from being permanently tainted with a fundamental misunderstanding about the universe. Having watched her solve a couple correctly via the tedious RSI-inducing method I showed her good old fashioned long division and she immediately got the method and it's better efficiency. Thing is I was sat there seriously wondering if this might cause some kind of trouble with teacher..

Edited February 19, 2012 by PiqueABoo
tpyo

[sted]

wouldnt a solution be to stop schools all having holidays at the same time so say all holidays in say Bradford are 2 weeks ahead/behind Leeds (except christmas)

[hit]

I got a note in my daughter's planner "Please do not show her your way of doing long division". The fact that she understood my method was irrelevant.

 

Have been there several time with my eldest! We were "invited" to a meeting with the headteacher. We explained that I had a degree in mathematics and a Dip HE in computer science, my wife has similar in chemical engineering, a second degree in psychology, 3 post grad certs (one being a PGCE) and therefore think that we may be better placed to teach our child elementary mathematics.

 

He continued to argue that we were undermining his school and his staff so we just pointed out that doing it one way only showed no differentiation and would probably be against most of the speil in his schools teaching and learning policies, every child matters policy etc. He soon shut up!

 

I can be a nightmare parent

[hit]

wouldnt a solution be to stop schools all having holidays at the same time so say all holidays in say Bradford are 2 weeks ahead/behind Leeds (except christmas)

 

That would be a nightmare! I live on a point where three boroughs meet. My youngest goes to primary in the borough we live in, my eldest in the second and the Mrs and I work in the third. There are loads of other parents in our area that are in the same position. we would never get a holiday together (maybe not such a bad thing )

[witch]

That would be a nightmare! I live on a point where three boroughs meet. My youngest goes to primary in the borough we live in, my eldest in the second and the Mrs and I work in the third. There are loads of other parents in our area that are in the same position. we would never get a holiday together (maybe not such a bad thing )

 

the school I work in is in Dorset but the high school it feeds into is in Poole, and one year the councils didnt co-ordinate their holidays so people had one child having one week off at half term, and another having the following one. There was such an outcry that the councils promised to consult on holiday dates in future years

[PiqueABoo]

a second degree in psychology, 3 post grad certs (one being a PGCE)

 

T'other 1/2 has a second degree in Psychology and obviously as a teacher, that PGCE

 

and therefore think that we may be better placed to teach our child elementary mathematics.

 

Should it ever come to that my line would be: Stay out of my life and I'll stay out of yours i.e. if I wasn't forced to 'engage' with a bunch of superfluous unwanted homework I wouldn't have cause to teach Sprogette via the 'wrong' methods.

 

I am a bit sympathetic towards the school case though - decent differentiation at Primary is an idiotically unrealistic ambition given that there is just one teacher and around 30 quite different kids, especially in this all-inclusive age when several of those kids are likely to have serious 'behavioural issues' that seriously undermine the other's education.

[sparkeh]

In respect to the calculation issue my sympathies lie with the school.

Firstly you should bear in mind that the school will probably have had the calculation strategy imposed on them by the LA.

Secondly any calculation method I have come across is usually a breaking down of traditional methods in smaller steps which are easier to understand, as children go up the years the steps are combined until they are using the traditional method.

Thirdly, if exam boards are looking for the use of a particular method in a calculation you may be doing your children no favours in forcing them to follow a different method.

 

Its easy to criticise schools and teacher and think you know best for your own child though

[featured_spectre]

The nursery where my child will be going to actively encouraged us to teach our daughter what we could before they get there EG letters, numbers etc.

 

Whilst my daughter doesn't know the order of the letters, she can tell you any letter you put in front of her, including the umlaut and essette letters of the German language.

 

She can also count to 50 (although occasionally misses 13,15 and 17) and can count to 10 in Spanish and German also. She can also do English, German and Spanish nursery rhymes.

 

She can also write the letters C, H, I, J, L, M, N, O, P, Q, S, T, U, V, W, X and Y. On top of this, she can write 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 0.

 

Along with that she can spell words (using sound out method) cat, dog, bus, mum, dad, nan, pig. She also does baby sign language confidently as well.

 

She is yet to reach 3 (she will be 3 in may), and teachers I know said I was setting a bad example as it undermines the work that they do....I explained that we were asked (and backed up in writing) to teach her as much as possible before she goes to nursery. The reason behind it is so the nursery can see the parents that try with the children rather than those that use the tv as the babysitter.

[elsiegee40]

There is no harm in teaching the alphabet @nephilim in my view. My daughter could both read and write before going to school. However, do make sure that she understands the phonetic alphabet, letter sounds (ah, buh, cuh) rather than names (Ay, Bee, Cee), as this will help her with phonics when reading. Our EYFS are carefully to emphasise sounds with the children... I hear them regularly doing this.

[garethEds]

wouldnt a solution be to stop schools all having holidays at the same time so say all holidays in say Bradford are 2 weeks ahead/behind Leeds (except christmas)

 

No. Because I work as a teacher in Swansea, my wife works in another county amd my boy will go to school in Carmarthenshire. The WAG said they were trying to get LEAs to schedule holidays at the same time.

 

Gareth

[featured_spectre]

She know's both sets, phonetically and their names. We play her scrabble game every day and she is getting very good with spellings. Like I said she spells words out phonetically and sounds out the word as she gets close also

[garethEds]

The nursery where my child will be going to actively encouraged us to teach our daughter what we could before they get there EG letters, numbers etc.

 

Whilst my daughter doesn't know the order of the letters, she can tell you any letter you put in front of her, including the umlaut and essette letters of the German language.

 

She can also count to 50 (although occasionally misses 13,15 and 17) and can count to 10 in Spanish and German also. She can also do English, German and Spanish nursery rhymes.

 

She can also write the letters C, H, I, J, L, M, N, O, P, Q, S, T, U, V, W, X and Y. On top of this, she can write 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 0.

 

Along with that she can spell words (using sound out method) cat, dog, bus, mum, dad, nan, pig. She also does baby sign language confidently as well.

 

She is yet to reach 3 (she will be 3 in may), and teachers I know said I was setting a bad example as it undermines the work that they do....I explained that we were asked (and backed up in writing) to teach her as much as possible before she goes to nursery. The reason behind it is so the nursery can see the parents that try with the children rather than those that use the tv as the babysitter.

 

Agree with you totally. If more of this was done then maybe the Gov wouldn't be moaning about falling standards. we are teaching our 19 month old son various bits and bobs. in both Welsh and English. He learns fast.

 

The best thing I have taught him is that rugby is better than football. lolol.

 

Gareth

[seacider]

When my now 13 yr old started at infant school he could both read and write, I was particularly gobsmacked by the Headteacher telling us off as it was their job to do it. At secondary school I had to help him with a rather strange way of long division taught by the school as he couldn't get his head around it. I showed him the way I was taught at junior school about 40 years ago which works as well now as then and he got it. The teachers have berated me more than once because "they have degrees and know how to teach". I, unfortunately do not have a degree, however I went to school when teachers really did know how to teach.

[sted]

No. Because I work as a teacher in Swansea, my wife works in another county amd my boy will go to school in Carmarthenshire. The WAG said they were trying to get LEAs to schedule holidays at the same time.

 

Gareth

 

fair enough there are always exceptions that it wont work for but if all leas have holidays at the same time holiday firms arnt going to change their pricing why would they?

 

as to what you should teach kids before they go to school my mum (who works in nursey as an nta (qualified as a nursery nurse)) is always shocked about what parents expect the school to teach including manners and how to use a knife and fork as an example