More than 800 Hampshire parents fined over truancy (From Romsey Advertiser)

I do not condone truancy but if it is of paramount importance that children are in school, can we not do away with all these inset days and additional school closures? Working parents are heavily burdened by these extra days, in addition to the extensive school holidays. Surely these days could be part of the term and half term closures to free up more time for learning and less down time for parents?

Maine Lobster wrote:
I do not condone truancy but if it is of paramount importance that children are in school, can we not do away with all these inset days and additional school closures? Working parents are heavily burdened by these extra days, in addition to the extensive school holidays. Surely these days could be part of the term and half term closures to free up more time for learning and less down time for parents?

You seem to think that schools are their for the benefit of your working life, schools are their to educate your children, having children is a lifetime commitment and they should be the most important thing in your life, i may have misinterpreted your post but it does come across that way.

ohec wrote:

Maine Lobster wrote: I do not condone truancy but if it is of paramount importance that children are in school, can we not do away with all these inset days and additional school closures? Working parents are heavily burdened by these extra days, in addition to the extensive school holidays. Surely these days could be part of the term and half term closures to free up more time for learning and less down time for parents?

You seem to think that schools are their for the benefit of your working life, schools are their to educate your children, having children is a lifetime commitment and they should be the most important thing in your life, i may have misinterpreted your post but it does come across that way.

Agree totally - free education wasn't always available and it's sad that so many parents value their children's upbringing so little.

Maine Lobster wrote:
I do not condone truancy but if it is of paramount importance that children are in school, can we not do away with all these inset days and additional school closures? Working parents are heavily burdened by these extra days, in addition to the extensive school holidays. Surely these days could be part of the term and half term closures to free up more time for learning and less down time for parents?

There are 1000's of working parents in this county, millions in the country who don't have a problem with getting their children to school.

They are poor parents who can't get their kids to school & you are making excuses for them & then putting it back on the schools because of Inset days.

How are children a 'heavy burden'? Dear oh dear.

Are all of the above saying they never took a day out when they were at school.
Truancy as i was dragged up, was when you left home to go to school but never went. Not deliberately kept home by parents. So if a child is Not Reporting to school for what ever the reason then the cause should be investigated not blanket fining/imprisonment of Parents. Both Parents and Teachers has a responsibility if a child has not attended then the school should contact the Parents on the day to find the cuase not give the child a letter to give to the Parent who then disposes of it what happened to the good old Truancy Officer..I also agree Teachers have to many excuses to close the schools for the day term time should be five days aweek for the duration of term (training days and the like)should be taken in the 6 week School holiday's.Also i think a better sceme would be to have 3week easter 4 week summer and a 2 week autumn then the christmas break this would give parents the chance to take children on holidays out side of peak periods when they can least afford it.

I know a retired teacher very well, and he agrees that the vast majority of INSET training days are, in his opinion, a total waste of time. And, interestingly, most teachers think that, too. So many have said that the majority of meetings that they are compelled to attend are unnecessary, and they simply generate more unnecessary work.
And who introduced all these training days, multiple meetings, and volumes of paper work ? It was ......TORIES !

And who agreed it was all a great idea ? It was.....WOMEN TEACHERS ! Cos you girls love chatting, don't you ? And you love having too much to do, as in "Oh God ! All this marking to do, and tick boxes to fill in !"

This last paragraph is only intended as satire, to amuse, not to offend.

However, I think the majority of teachers, both male and female, have doubts about the content of the majority of INSET days.

''Parents handed a penalty notice have to pay £50 within 28 days''. .and still saving 200 odd quid by taking Timmy & Jemima out of school for two weeks in term time. Bargain!

ohec wrote:

Maine Lobster wrote: I do not condone truancy but if it is of paramount importance that children are in school, can we not do away with all these inset days and additional school closures? Working parents are heavily burdened by these extra days, in addition to the extensive school holidays. Surely these days could be part of the term and half term closures to free up more time for learning and less down time for parents?

You seem to think that schools are their for the benefit of your working life, schools are their to educate your children, having children is a lifetime commitment and they should be the most important thing in your life, i may have misinterpreted your post but it does come across that way.

I absolutely agree that schools are there to educate children and exactly why I fell inset days are an unnecessary additional absence for the children.
My point is is that with the need to cover school absences for about 13 weeks a year, extra inset days could and ought to accommodated with in that period and not as an additional headache for working parents.

Shoong wrote:

Maine Lobster wrote: I do not condone truancy but if it is of paramount importance that children are in school, can we not do away with all these inset days and additional school closures? Working parents are heavily burdened by these extra days, in addition to the extensive school holidays. Surely these days could be part of the term and half term closures to free up more time for learning and less down time for parents?

There are 1000's of working parents in this county, millions in the country who don't have a problem with getting their children to school. They are poor parents who can't get their kids to school & you are making excuses for them & then putting it back on the schools because of Inset days. How are children a 'heavy burden'? Dear oh dear.

I make no excuse for parents who can't get their kids to school - total misinterpretation and irrelevant.
Children are not a heavy burden, but the 37 week school year plus inset days is extremely difficult for working parents. Read the post.

Remember the days when teachers taught education. I can! Remember the days when there was one week at Easter a week at Christmas, six weeks in July/August and school was 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Five days a week. I can! My teachers had commonsense My teachers explained the theory. My teachers had control of the classroom. Today's teachers have more time off, more money, less education to teach, are far from interested in the children than they are of the size of their wage packet. Truancy has always been around, even in the days when you got a job directly out of school. Not today, because there are no jobs and even the with jobs can't keep them because of high taxation. So how are parents going to manage with having to pay 50 quid a time because teachers can't teach and kids find it more interesting to kick a ball around or break and enter.

One time at when my kids were at Primary I informed my school of my son's dentist appointment in advance as normal. On the morning of the appointment they phoned up and asked why he wasn't at school when were about to leave for the appointment. It turned out on that occasion they were not authorising the absence needed to go to the dentist and hadn't told me. However, if my son did not keep the appointment since we were informed too late to give the required 24 hours notice he would have to go private (which would mean he would not have dentist at all as we can't afford private dental treatment) and I told them this but they would prefer him to be in school on this occasion and lose access to dental treatment at least until he could afford to pay for his own dental treatment if he got a well paid job as an adult. It also turned out they didn't book him a dinner either even though I requested one in the letter but they didn't tell me- If I'd known I'd have taken him home for an early lunch before bringing him in to school as he had to go hungry because I didn't know they hadn't booked him a lunch.

Maine Lobster wrote:

ohec wrote:

Maine Lobster wrote: I do not condone truancy but if it is of paramount importance that children are in school, can we not do away with all these inset days and additional school closures? Working parents are heavily burdened by these extra days, in addition to the extensive school holidays. Surely these days could be part of the term and half term closures to free up more time for learning and less down time for parents?

You seem to think that schools are their for the benefit of your working life, schools are their to educate your children, having children is a lifetime commitment and they should be the most important thing in your life, i may have misinterpreted your post but it does come across that way.

I absolutely agree that schools are there to educate children and exactly why I fell inset days are an unnecessary additional absence for the children.
My point is is that with the need to cover school absences for about 13 weeks a year, extra inset days could and ought to accommodated with in that period and not as an additional headache for working parents.

There should be free childcare for all children at Primary school and those that needed it at Secondary School (not all Secondary School kids can look after themselves for the day). As a mum with 3 special needs children INSET days are days I cannot get anything done- everything has to be fitted in to the rest of the week. This can be a problem especially when you have 2 school's worth of INSET days to cope with.

Cookiecutter wrote:
Remember the days when teachers taught education. I can! Remember the days when there was one week at Easter a week at Christmas, six weeks in July/August and school was 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Five days a week. I can! My teachers had commonsense My teachers explained the theory. My teachers had control of the classroom. Today's teachers have more time off, more money, less education to teach, are far from interested in the children than they are of the size of their wage packet. Truancy has always been around, even in the days when you got a job directly out of school. Not today, because there are no jobs and even the with jobs can't keep them because of high taxation. So how are parents going to manage with having to pay 50 quid a time because teachers can't teach and kids find it more interesting to kick a ball around or break and enter.

Cookie - you are absolutely right, of course - but teachers had a cane then ! They didn't use it much, it was a deterent. And real mums and dads were both present, none of this cop-out divorce sh*t with single step mums and part time partners ! And those real parents knew their job. They sided with the teachers every time, and if you got in trouble at school, you got in worse trouble at home.
Schools kept to a basic curriculum : none of this computer studies, media studies, drama, personal and social education, mamby pamby old w*nk.
But the key thing, the most important thing of all, polititians kept their ignorant, ill-informed, inexperienced noses out of it. You don't see the likes of Cameron and co up a f*cking crane telling the driver how to do his job, do you ? How many INSET days do binmen get ?

A story about a school? Well, as part of the Echo Hivemind I'd like to complain about students, who are all scum.

Hopefully the fines aren't handed out when there's a single or very occasional truancy episode (though kids these days aren't safe like we used to be when we scived off school once or twice a year as teenagers, forging sickness letters from our parents, so that has to be borne in mind too).
Teachers' meetings and training should be covered during their normal working days. Even if marking and class prep have to be done outside the very short school day, there's still plenty of time between 8am and 6pm for teachers to do that and they'd still be doing fewer hours than most people in comparable professional roles in the private sector, many of whom have to work 50-70 hours a week without any overtime pay or time off in lieu (or find themselves redundant very quickly!). Teachers are extremely well paid these days.
I happened to be outside a secondary school the other day at 3pm and the teachers were out of school faster than the schoolkids! Alright for some ....!!
It's also very noticeable these days that secondary pupils are out before infants and juniors. So what if the secondary school starts at 8.30am - surely they should be studying till 4pm/4.30pm and sixth formers even later if school work is as pressurised/difficul
t these days as we're all led to believe.

Does it really matter if kids turn up or not? If we're preparing kids for a life on benefits surely it's cruel to subject them to an education? It would be much easier just to give them brief tuition on form filling then leave them to fester.

Poppy22 wrote:
Hopefully the fines aren't handed out when there's a single or very occasional truancy episode (though kids these days aren't safe like we used to be when we scived off school once or twice a year as teenagers, forging sickness letters from our parents, so that has to be borne in mind too).
Teachers' meetings and training should be covered during their normal working days. Even if marking and class prep have to be done outside the very short school day, there's still plenty of time between 8am and 6pm for teachers to do that and they'd still be doing fewer hours than most people in comparable professional roles in the private sector, many of whom have to work 50-70 hours a week without any overtime pay or time off in lieu (or find themselves redundant very quickly!). Teachers are extremely well paid these days.
I happened to be outside a secondary school the other day at 3pm and the teachers were out of school faster than the schoolkids! Alright for some ....!!
It's also very noticeable these days that secondary pupils are out before infants and juniors. So what if the secondary school starts at 8.30am - surely they should be studying till 4pm/4.30pm and sixth formers even later if school work is as pressurised/difficul

t these days as we're all led to believe.

Poppy22....everythin
g you have said is complete nonsense. Go into a school for a week and see for yourself what teachers do. Find out why everything you have said is based on flawed thinking and groundless supposition. Besides, the idiotic comments you have made have all been made before, which makes you something of dinosaur !

ohec wrote:

Maine Lobster wrote:
I do not condone truancy but if it is of paramount importance that children are in school, can we not do away with all these inset days and additional school closures? Working parents are heavily burdened by these extra days, in addition to the extensive school holidays. Surely these days could be part of the term and half term closures to free up more time for learning and less down time for parents?

You seem to think that schools are their for the benefit of your working life, schools are their to educate your children, having children is a lifetime commitment and they should be the most important thing in your life, i may have misinterpreted your post but it does come across that way.

When I was at school (and I am talking since age 7, not just 11-16/18 including 6th form) we started 8.30am and didn't finish till 5.30pm (5.00 on Wednesday and Saturday, YES SATURDAY), a 6 day week and sometimes NO half term in the Easter Term. Why schools insist on having all these inset, teacher training days is beyond me, schools are there to teach children, not to be taken off your hands for a few hours, but for a FULL day. On a side note, the most important thing in your life should be Faith, followed by your partner should you have one, THEN your children. Parents who put kids first neglect their spouse, which causes family breakdown, which in the end hurts the child. If your spouse comes first, children will see a happy home life and therefore be better off and happy themselves!

We have problems with our local School tweeking attandance marks to make the school look better in my opinion.

My neighbour took her daughter to the beach on wednesday instead of letting her go to school, i even told her why can't they go to the beach next week as the kids are on easter holidays, but she didn't care, then her daughter plastered it on facebook that she went to the beach, but they got away with it cos the mother called the school saying her daughter was not well , then said the sunburn was from sitting in the back garden.
i am not impressed as i told her if she is found out she will get a fine, she also is on dss so can't afford a fine but can pay for a car on the never never,