you give no idea of date or board so for an idea the following are LHR to LCA but do not include transfers for 1 week 8th - 15th Aug

Crown Elamaris B&B £1716 HB £1928

Isaacs studios S/C £1696

assumes 3 adults and 1 child [age 10] in 2 rooms

prices from Fleetway Travel

Yasus
wizard

this batch is for flights MAN-LCA for 2 weeks 8th - 22nd Aug again not including transfers

Windmill Apartments Permera S/C £2138 H/B £2516

prices from A1 travel

yasus
wizard

Hi Cypruschick, We had pretty much the same senario as you last year when our daughter started high school. We had previously booked late sept early october for years at much better prices like you said. We got round it by breaking our "package holiday" habit and did it all seperately for quite a chunky saving! The first thing is to sort out flights, once these are booked then you can leave it quite late to book accomodation as the prices drop considerably a few weeks before so you can hopefully get a bargain. Even with a 110 euro return taxi to protaras we paid £2000 for the whole trip staying at the rising star in august where the package price was £2600 with night flights.

This is why we stopped going in the summer as it's just ridiculously expensive when you have older kids. So much so that we found it better value to go long haul: Usa, Mexico etc

thanks all for your replies i will price up the travel agents you have suggested and also diy, anything around £2000 would be nice also i think i might let them have a couple of sickie days the last week of term as they do nothing anyway and sports day has been cancelled the last 3 years because of bad weather.

don't know if this will help just googled olympic holidays on line and got this up if any good to you:
protaros Windmills hotel/apartments s/c £2144.56 12th august to 26th manchester to larnaca olympic usually have transfers included .
We got ours off here we went into a travel agent co-op with the printout and they price matched it for us. If you have a co-op
card you use it like tesco and you get a divie back for the christmas after you take your holiday .we got £19 last year not a lot
but better than nothing.forgot to say this was 3 adults 1 child good luck with whatever you decide.Know the feeling they wife works in a school.

You can get 3% cashback from Olympic Holidays by signing up here. Decent amount on £2000
http://www.topcashback.co.uk/

Note for mods
I have no interest in this company other than as a customer/subscriber (and I didn't even use my referrer link)

thanx i will try olympic have been with them before, they were miles cheaper than thomsons, only problem we had was with flight, very poor, it was with a small airline who only had 2 planes(flyjet??????maybe)but they have gone bust now. I'm finding it hard to commit to booking anything because i keep expecting to find a really good bargain plus i'm still really annoyed at not going in june and jealous of everyone who still can go when they want. I have a very sad life i know....

we have always travelled in school hol's due to my job we still have to even though are children are older,in most cases children are allowed 10 days unotherised leave have you asked your daughter school about this, also the day before school close usually is a bit cheaper,we find round about the 16th august is too good look.

I'd like to know how they could even think about fining you let along ending up in prison over taking your own children on holiday !!
They are missing a week/weeks of schooling, very important I'm sure but in a life time of learning how significant is it really ?
The real point being if stopping them learning for two weeks is such a major problem that someone could face fines/gaol over it then why do the schools themselves constantly interupt their learning with day trips, weeks in france, teacher training day, sports days, exchange days, boiler is broken this week, building work that should have been finished over the holiday period but is taking longer so don't come back for another week... etc etc...

Steve

PS over the time our children were growing up they came home nearly every week with another trip, another day out etc and not one of them were in anyway educational ! We did send our oldest daughter to France for a week thinking they will learn some of the language, see some of the important land marks etc but did they ? No, they went to the big theme park, played about... basically it was like being on holiday with your parents... not a word of French was spoken to them... !

It all comes down to the government's school absenteeism stats Steve if a shild has an unauthorised day off he/she affects the stats.
Our school is pretty lenient I have to say. We often have a parent writing a letter to say they are intending taking their child out of school for a week during term time. The head has no problem with this. However, I don't think he'd be happy if I had a fortnight off during term to get a cheaper holiday It's not fair

I think our holidays taught our children far more in a couple of weeks than any teacher could have done in school...

We've all been to school and I don't need to bore you with explaining doing some maths or English etc...

But on holiday the whole thing is an adventure..
It will show and allow them to feel different things that no amount of book learning could..
You can't feel that warm sunshine in a book... you can suddenly begin to empathize with people in a story when they are in a desert or you can begin to understand the magnitude of building the Pyramids in the heat you now understand..
Ours were all encouraged to try and learn a little of the language of the country they were in, (basics of please and thank you etc).. teaching them langauge, good maners and a different culture all in one...
Its taught them how to be organised, how to navigate, how to make sense of signs and instructions ...
It taught one of them how to swim (she'd been going to lessons at school each week but was still on floats etc, but a week into the holiday playing in the pool with her siblings she became a little dolphin !)
Its given them something to look forward to, its given them a grounding in life when they have seen parents working hard to achieve a goal of a decent holiday, it shows them that working hard has its rewards... if you kept turning around and saying sorry you have to keep going to school, we can't afford to go away then I'm sure they might take a different view of life...

Schooling is important don't get me wrong.. I did very well in school and worked hard but many of the things I did learn have never been any use to me since.. in fact some of the things I did learn have been proved to be totally incorrect since !!
Schools are not the be all and end all of anyones education... its been taken and turned completely the wrong way around.. Schools should be a place packed to the rafters with interest and skills that children should be climbing over each other to get their bit.. Not a something one step up from a Police state run prison camp where parents will be punished if the pupils don't make the grades etc...

Schools should help out and make time available for children to be able to go on holiday with their parents (which is far more important than learning that 2a+45y=15b etc). Modern learning should be much more flexible than it is, with most of the stuff they do being computer based, even homework sites are now set up for them to log on to and do this weeks piece it shouldn't be that difficult to work around a couple of weeks off !

thanks for all your comments i agree they miss so much school with trips(we've been on 2 in the past week,Eden camp and a mining museum) and other themed days and fund raising days and especially in the run up to Christmas and the end of term. We've decided to bite the bullet and go the last week of term and the week after, this is quite a bit cheaper than the official six week holiday! Don't know where we are going yet, still trying to find that bargain!!!!

we just took our 2 out of school, our youngest is in reception and he got an authorised absence and our eldest got an unauthorised absence. The arguement you can also mention is when they close the schools for teacher training and our kids cant go to school..why cant they do teacher training during school holidays!!!

Im a single parent who has just booked a holiday in school term time! In fact i have always gone in school time, but last time i went abroad was 4 years ago when my son was in primary, but he has this year started secondary Grammar school, so i was almost certain his new school wouldn't let us go on holiday during term time. However i got my son to enquire about holidays to his teacher a couple of weeks ago and he got given a holiday form stating he can take up to 10 days off for a holiday! So as i'd just had a bonus at work i decided to go for it and book a holiday! We are now going to Protaras 23rd May to 6th June (for 2 weeks) for £231 each - and the 2nd week of the holiday is half term anyway so he will only be missing 5 days schooling! So its worth asking the school - i didn't think for a minute his very strict Grammar school would allow him....but we asked - and luckily we got!