If the education system (or lack of one) is forcing you to take your holidays at certain times them the school can't really say much. The only thing I can see him missing may be the yr 7 exams, depending on when they take them. May could be a little early but it varies from school to school.

up until last year we took our boys out for an extra week at may half term. have taken them out in years 7,8 and 9 and I check carefully and talk to other mums about what their children did in that year and tried to ascertain as best I could that it didnt clash with anything . with the school my children attend I found it best to take the half term week then the week after rather than the week before. This was because in the lower school i.e key stage 3 the school seem to concentrate on end of year exams between easter and half term . After half term the school is busy with GCSE,s which run from half term to the end of June. with trips etc I have always found the school seem to follow the same pattern of dates year after year . If your school has a website this can be useful if they run a calander on there. so I would agree it would be just the end of year exams you would need to check.

lyn

I don't think your 11 year old will thank you for this, come September, however bright they happen to be. As has been pointed out the KS2 SAT's results are forwarded to the secondary school. They are used to help ensure that your child is streamed correctly.

Now although things tend to get put right later after further tests and teacher assessments, the chances are that no matter how good your child's previous SAT and mock SAT results were, they will be placed in the bottom stream. For a bright, clever child this is pure purgatory even if it is for just a few short weeks.

Personally I think you are being unfair to your child and also unfair to the school, who suffer by lower publicised results through no fault of their own and who I presume are not going to allow you permission for a holiday absence during a SAT's week? If they do not grant permission then the absence will be unauthorised and will be reported to the local education authority who may decide to fine you.

I dislike SAT's (my two are doing KS1 and KS3 this year) and how they are used and I dislike the way attempting to get away on holiday during term time is now considered a crime. However that is the way it is and I usually find it is better to work with the system than against it when it comes to a child's education.

One other point. I know of one education authority (Birmingham) who have their truant officers stationed at the local airport during term time in order to check authorisation from schools for those who are travelling with school age children. Not a pleasant start to a holiday if you happen to get stopped even if you have the authorisation with you or are from another authority because they still do a full report to your child's school which stays on record until the child finishes their education.

we travel from birmingham a lot and im always taking my daughter out of school with permission although the school never gives me a permission note as proof, and ive never seen these officers so where did you get this information from ? theres always loads of families when we go despite it being in term time, ive also got loads of friends that do the same and none of them have been stopped at birmingham either, so not sure if i fully accept this or not !!!! this seems to be getting a bit over the top, if the government are so concerned about this why dont they sort it out with the TO its their prices that make a lot of people go in school time , ive got 2 older children aswell as a 7 year old and both my older 2 that have left school are doing extremely well for themselves, including my son in college full time and my 20 year old is now a deputy manager ,both passed their exams, emma passed all her a levels with good results despite me taking them on school hols in term time think that says it all !!!

ellie, accept it or not as you like. I would not post something that is untrue, why would I? I resent the implication that you make. Having been stopped at the airport on a day that was a teacher's training day prior to a weeks school holiday and having had a long chat with the officer concerned I can assure you it is true. We also got stopped on New Street in Birmingham one day recently following a visit to the children's hospital with our daughter. *Both times the schools had been informed and the appropriate permission had been granted.

We don't live in the Birmingham area but the reports are still made to the schools concerned. It's easy pickings at the airport if you think about it and certainly justifies the existence of the truant officers.

If your school doesn't issue permission slips then ask them to do so.

Times are changing and schools and local authorities are tightening up. It is totally irrelevant what happened previously. We have to live in the here and now and deal with it accordingly. **I would also add that we had no idea they were about at the airport until we were approached by the young woman concerned who was accompanied by a police officer! They don't advertise!

*Edited to make it clear that obviously we had permission the first time because the whole school was off but I always carry the appropriate letter or documentation with me in order to demonstrate that we are not breaking the law! Sorry for the misunderstanding I was rushing the original answer.

**Just something to add that you are not always aware of who is about and why.

you have taken it totally out of context i wasnt implying anything but only saying in my and my friends experiences and of all the years of travelling i do and i go away 5-6 times a year ive never seen any officers checking families, i didnt say i didnt believe you just not sure what i think, we do use birmingham more than any other airport, also i have a son that was off school a lot with medical problems this involved lots of trips to hospitals including birmingham and again ive not had any checks there either, he only left school a year ago too, sorry you misunderstood me

Well I work inBirmingham magster and have never heard of truancy officers patroling airports. But if you say so. We occasionally have the police bring back a truant who they have picked up shoplifting in the local shopping centre but never one who was just out and about.

As for the school putting a child in bottom set if they have no SATs scores. If that happens then avoid that school. SATs scores are an indicator not the be all and end all. At my school the head of year goes out to all our feeder schools (15 or 16 of them) and speaks with the class teachers of all the kids we are going to get. Ths info is given just as much weight when deciding which sets to put the kids in. In fact SATs are so inaccurate that we have a re-sort after about 10 weeks based on something called MIDYSS which is a far finer measure of a child's ability. It is amazing how many kids with good SATs levels get dropped a set or two. It is also amazing how most of these not so bright kids with the amazing levels all come from the same school but that's a horse of a different colour.

I am totally amazed that just because someone hasn't seen something or it hasn't happened to them or someone they know, they don't believe it or treat it with scepticism!

I don't think the thread is about the whys and wherefores of SATS per se and I do not intend to get into a debate about how results are used by schools. It is a discussion as to whether it is a good idea to take child out of school during SAT's week. Just because I happen to have gone against the majority opinion on this thread doesn't make my opinion any less valid!

Apologies in advance if necessary and if anyone thinks this might be unfriendly but I dislike the implications that I have been economical with the truth and under the circumstances defend my corner.

I spoke to the two year 6 children from our school today who are going on holiday during the SATS week and both said their parents had not spoken to them before booking the holiday.Both children are high achievers and are upset about the fact they will be placed in different sets at secondary school to the other children who they have worked with all this year.Neither of them are looking forward to their holidays which is a real shame for everyone concerned.Obviously all children are different but being put in to the wrong set can have long term effects on a childs education and i believe we all need to treat our children as individuals and in the case of year 6 or year 9 children especially to make sure their opinions are taken into account when deciding whether to take them on holiday during a SATS week.
As for a earlier comment about teachers not being worried about whether a child misses the SATS or not,can i say that as a Learning support assistant who has worked intensely with many Year 6 children who were at the beginning of the year not expected to get a level at all and who have tried so hard to improve their results and in turn their self esteem to see the oppurtunity to have a try and do their best in the SATS taken away from them is heartbreaking.The SATS may not be a good system but that is the one we have and the children have been working towards these tests all year.

Well I believe you, Magster! Some local authorities up here in Scotland have started to go a stage further and have truancy patrols in and around the city centres and shopping malls. They stop people they see with school age kids and take down the details etc and then contact the schools. Woebetide you if you've phoned in or sent a note in to say that that your child is 'sick'.

SATS are imperfect but there all you've got and let's not forget that they're not just popular with the Government. Without them how would parents know which schools were doing well? I personally deplore the league tables and the effeects they have on both schools and kids but the big drive for them came just as much from parents wanting to know which were the best schools so they could try and get their kids into them as it did from the Government wanting to try and drive up standards in the low achieving ones. I know of friends down south who've even moved house (and paid a premium price!) in order to get into the catchment area for the primary schools that had the best record and were most likely to get their child into the highest achieving secondary schools.

And paid for extra private tuition for their kids to be coached for the Yr6 SATs. I've always thought this is potentially counterproductive, yes, it means they get a good SATs score but can end up out of their depth because they end up in a higher set than they can really cope with once they move to secondary school. I wonder how many of those kids who end up being 'downgraded' with all the damaging consequences for their self- esteem and confidence etc come into this category? It's not just schools who try and 'fix' the SAT results.

SM

My son will have, today, finished his Yr 9 SATs.

I am taking him out of school for two days in the last week before Spring Bank Holiday, Thursday and Friday to go on holiday for the week.

Its the very first time we have ever taken him out of school......but if we'd have looked at going on the Saturday, we just couldn't have afforded to go. Its about time something was done to prevent the way Tour Operators and Airlines rip us off by dramatically increasing their prices during school holidays.

Although I certainly wouldn't take him, or my youngest son out of school during ANY examinations. I always mark these dates down on my calender as soon as I receive them in September.

Each to their own I suppose.........!!

Elaine

Shazzacat. You work in a school. The teachers of those children should make sure that their secondary gets their 'teacher levels' which are supposedly given as much weight as the SAT scores. It isn't much of a secondary school that can't see in a couple of weeks that a kid is in the wrong set and do something about it. It is up to your school to make sure enough info is sent to the secondary so that these children get into the correct set.

Mind you at least you school sends SAT levels. We have schools that never even give us the information in the first place.

Hi De Hi-We do make sure that we send as much info as possible to the local secondary school and tell parents to show the school reports,teachers assessments etc.Unfortunately the secondary school takes a dim view of children missing the SATS because they were on holiday and as i mentioned in an earlier posting they make it quite clear that they will put the children in the bottom sets and not move them until they have been tested which is just before Christmas.
We are very limited as to the choice of secondary schools we have in our area,we only have the one secondary school within walking distance so many parents choose this school rather than sending the children on a daily bus journey of almost an hour each way.
The local secondary school has recently acquired academy status which we hoped would improve things-alas not.

my son is in year 9 and has just spent the week doing sats, ready to be placed into his gcse groups.....

he gets very bad migraines, and the school did say if he missed an exam, dont worry we use all his course work to ensure he gets into the correct ability class, they are important, but not that important.........

dont worry, go on holiday, its far more benificial in my eyes for the child to spend time with family, with todays busy lifestyles........

enjoy!

Sorry off topic but the fact that the school is now an academy speaks volumes for the state of the school. If it was even just satisfactory it would not be considered as suitable for an academy. Sadly the new status rarely changes the school.

Sadly the new status rarely changes the school.

But it does give the Governors and Head teacher greater powers and put extra pressure on them to turn it around. The very fact that it has been given academy status could be the very reason why they are taking the line they are. They'll be taking a dim view of parents who remove their children from school during term time because this is the sort of thing that counts in league tables etc and what better way of making this clear than penalising those kids whose parents appear to make a habit of it. I'm not saying that I condone their attitude but from their perspective I can see that they would possibly regard themselves as storing up trouble for the future if they appear to condone the action of parents who take their kids out of school during SATS testing week.

SM

If they do not grant permission then the absence will be unauthorised

Oh yes? For some years before I retired I worked as a school secretary and it was my job to write to parents who had asked to take their child away in term time to say it would be considered an 'unauthorised absence'. Strangely enough, before the figures were eventually passed up the line, many of these had become 'authorised', in order to keep the school's place in the wonderful 'league tables'

I can second that aslemma, my mother has just retired from a primary school, that is why I'm not particularly bothered about sats, it's all for the schools benefit after all. Holidays in term time never effected my schooling or any of my families and if i though for one minute it would effect my son's I'd book in school hols.

Hi

Yes with regards to the school putting the holiday as unauthorised, its strange how when you get the school report at the end of the year showing how the school has performed, the number of unauthorised absences is a very small percentage considering the number of children you know have taken a week or more off for hols.

I've always been guilty of taking them out for a week, usually trying to latch it on to a half term holiday, and trying my best to avoid any tests. However next year we are at GCSE level so I don't suppose we should have time off during term time in case my daughter misses important work.