Hi all, not a lot of time but if you're incensed at the impossible price increases levied on parents to book vacations during the school holiday to prevent them being fined you need to badger your local MP ASAP:
Please email your MP, asking them to turn up and telling them your reasons for wanting the changes to the school attendance policy reversed.
Here's an email I've received explaining it all:
John Hemming MP has managed to get a Backbench debate in Parliament next Monday - 24th Feb - at 4.30pm.
Technically the debate is about the travel industry charging more in holiday times because despite the 203,000 signatures on this petition, John couldn't get cross party support for a debate on whether it's fine for parents to use our own discretion as to when its OK to take our kids out of school.
So now the challenge is to make sure that the debate is well-attended and relevant to what we want: the reversal of the change to school attendance policy.
But most of all, we need MPs to turn up! Backbench business debates often have very few attendees. The more MPs who turn up, the more seriously the issue will be taken. For that, we need your help.
We've sent MPs a briefing document but it will only get read if MPs think they need to go to the debate and they will only do that if their constituents tell them to.
So please, email your MP now, ask them to attend the debate and tell him or her your reasons for wanting the changes reversed. We can draw MPs attention to some of the points we've put below, but it is your individual stories which bring these to life and give MPs a wider understanding of what the rules mean in real life.
Here are some of the reasons signatories to the petition have for wanting the changes in school attendance policy reversed:
Give children a childhood
Consideration for children with Special Educational Needs
Building family relationships in a 24*7 working society
Work commitments / Business prevent holidays out of term
Small businesses, few employees, all wanting time off together
The society of depressed teenagers we are breeding
Educating a child extends far beyond GCSE results or classroom learning
Family crisis, parental illness, funerals, divorce even
Family occasions
Diverse society with families abroad
School-parental relationship
Pupil-school relationship
Cost - it is not about a “cheap” holiday – to some families – it is the difference between, going or not. It is not about “saving” money, rather it is about “affording” - after possibly saving up for it, for say, 3 years
Impact on tourism related businesses in the UK
It won't help persistent absentees, they have less time of for family holidays than regular attendees
Rule out of all proportion to the impact: only 5% of absences due to family holiday
Waste of local authority & magistrates limited resources
Government shouldn't be making law like this, with no meaningful evidence & no consultation
Good luck
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Debate in Parlement re Travel industry price increase in school holiday
46 replies
bigpigsmum · 22/02/2014 17:33
OP posts:
Paintyfingers ·
22/02/2014 19:41
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