I'm not a parent but, if I were, I imagine I'd be furious. I like to think I could cope with the casual stesses of parenthood; the occasional bit of paint sprawled over the walls or the endless wiping of snotty noses (and worse). However, there is one thing that I guarantee would send me over the edge: a school telling me when my family was allowed go on holiday.
Photo by Bayu jefri: https://www.pexels.com/photo/
If you are a parent, this problem will be all too familiar. Do you risk taking your child out of school so you can have a reasonably-priced holiday in term time, or do you pay through the nose and take your holiday during the mandated school holiday time? Of course, you might not even be able to afford an international holiday then, so you might be forced to take out another mortgage or - worse - just go to Blackpool.
This year, in a vain attempt to feel middle-class, my wife and I recently took a trip to Centre Parcs. Jolly nice it was too. However, being fairly new to the elite, middle-class scene, we opted to go on one of the "cheaper weeks". That is, one of the weeks a lodge costs £500 and not (brace yourself for this) £1 500.
A 3x price increase? Seems reasonable.
However, it seems that Centre Parcs isn't the only company trying to eek every penny out of you. If you choose to go abroad on your holiday, you'll likely find that flights will be over double the price, as will the hotel, airport parking, and the medication you need to tolerate a plane full of screaming children.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert in hospitality or aviation, but I really don't see how the running costs of a lodge can suddenly skyrocket on specific weeks of the year or how an aeroplane can cost three times more money to fly in August as it does in May.
No. I would imagine that the reason hotels, resorts, and airline companies jack up their prices during the school holidays is simply because: they can. For years, we've been entirely at their mercy and have just accepted this simply because we had to.
If you do dare to make a stance and try to game their system by visiting during their off-peak periods, you risk getting a fine from the school. Such is this blatant abuse of capitalism by hospitality companies, I'm starting to think that headteachers have shares in them.
As a parent, then, you're effectively being punished for having children. While childless and older couples benefit from having a nice cheap holiday whenever they fancy it, parents are forced to pay a penance for wanting to start a family. There hasn't been a movement against procreation quite like this since the 80s Chinese government.
Booking time off for a holiday should be simple. As an adult, when I want to book time off work, I submit a request for annual leave. If it's approved, great, I go on holiday. If it's not, I schedule a bunch of emails to send during that time and then just go anyway. It's a good system.
So, my question is this: why can't children have the same "annual leave" system? Why don't schools allow pupils a set number of days (maybe five a year) that they are free to take off whenever they want (bar a few important exam weeks)?
Perhaps schools could even advise when would be a better time for some students to go on holiday and when they could afford to miss a day of school. The lesson on oxbow lakes, for instance, or perhaps just during any geography lesson for that matter.
At this point, a jobsworth headteacher will pipe up with a stern expression and explain that every lesson in school is very important, including the ones where children take turns to read a book out loud slowly in class, colour in a map of Europe, or watch a YouTube video on something a teacher couldn't be bothered to teach. Above all, though, they'll say adamantly that education should always be the priority, right up to the point they decide to go on strike.
Realistically though, taking a child out of class for the odd extracurricular activity isn't that big of a deal, and we do it all the time. Children get taken out of lessons for all sorts of reasons: Music, field trips, Duke of Edinburgh awards, therapy sessions, so why should a short family break be any different?
As a child, I think I can count the number of days we had a full class on one hand. That's because if someone wasn't doing something extracurricular, they would be ill (at my school, usually because they were hungover), so let's stop treating a school abscene like a criminal activity. As an added bonus, we could stop dishing out certificates for perfect attendance and shun all the other students who had the audacity to catch a cold that year.
And speaking of illnesses, I seem to remember that we had a global pandemic a few years ago where teachers sent children work to complete from home when they couldn't come into school anyway. Since then, there's been an explosion in remote working. If adults who don't know how to use Zoom or Teams properly can navigate it on a daily basis, why shouldn't a generation of technophiles do it for a few days of the year?
Right now, parents reason (quite rightly) that a fine from the school would cost them less overall than the extra cost of going on holiday during term time, so they'll either just take the hit or lie to the school, or both. The system is completely broken.
Why should it be like that? Let's have an official system where parents can opt to take their children out of school officially with the schools blessing. Teachers can then plan work for students they know won't be at a lesson well in advance and, in concert, parents could ensure they allocate some time during the holiday for the kids to catch up on work they missed that day.
This would remove the deceit, narrow the gap between off-peak and on-peak travel seasons, and enable us to stand up to a greedy hospitality industry that's been taking advantage of this system for too long.