It would help if the council would stop moving the holidays around. The two week Easter break is VERY early in 2008, despite commitments in the past to keep it to weeks 14 and 15.

#1
Well Easter does have a habit of moving around itself as it is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Perhaps naming it Spring Break and nailing it down would help but the anti-PC bunch would cause a row.
So now it's the fault of those education busting holiday companies that our children skip school, the anti-educational tour packaging swines.

Pipped at the post again Scullion. I can't seem to get at the Scotsman before you! Took me a long time to get the tree decorated this evening....
Parents - don't be tempted to take family holidays during term time. The message you give to your children is that school is not your number 1 priority. Even if your school(s) appear(s) less then perfect to you, keep it to yourself. Children who do really well in school tend to have few absences.

Think back to yesterday's news item, young people are getting "happier". Maybe it's all that extra time off school.

If some of the kids end up being taxi drivers, they'll have to be careful what they say, judging by today's headline news item.

some parents say it is educational to take kids abroad. well, it is just as educational during school holiday times so it all about saving money without regard to the consequences. The kids never make up the time and in their eyes education is cheaper than a trip to Disneyland ( if that can be described as educational)

maybe there are two many days like this one?

Two children in the edinburgh area were attack last week. the attackers some younger 2nd year children, from a rival school recruited known local drug dealers in early twenties in there misadventure.

Attacked a 15 and 16 year old on their way home from school. The attack was unprovoked, a near broken jaw, some broken teeth and rape where the rewards for the attacking youths, for the victims they are currently off school for fear of another attack.

Time line of response from the police and the school. The police said they would contact the family within a couple of days, a week has gone by. The family by doing their own investigation, have located the attackers, the police still have not contacted the family.

The school we not very helpful so far several calls to both schools have gone unreturned.

Currently the victims are off school, the parents fear of another attack is 100% likely, as this is not the first time this has happened. The attackers are in school currently and on the streets and the wheel keeps turning.

Scotland's education system is a joke.
Get some bloody self respect back and sort it out for goodness sake! How these kids can be so out of control is beyond belief. They are scruffy, rude, obnoxious, crude, crass, slovenly, foul mouthed, futureless and void of any intelligence...
They look like they woke up in the clothes they wear to school, the jewellery they wear is more important than the books in their bags,and the lack of discipline in their schools is shocking..
Sort it out you sad buggers!

If the parents had to pay up-front for the education of their offspring, they would make damn sure the kids attended.

Unfortunately, the parents and kids see education as a free 'right' which it is not, as the long-suffering taxpayer has to fork out for this.

Contrast these feral brats and their parants with African kids who are so value education that they are smartly dressed and enjoy learning despite having to share books, paper and pens. Even if they have desks, these have to be shared, and the classroom is often a mud hut.

The spoiled brats of this country have no idea.

Some parents don't have the choice when they take holidays though. My dad was told every year when his holidays were to be (so that there was enough workers on all summer) and that they could be anywhere between May and September. In my secondary schooling I missed 2 weeks worth of education in 2 of the 6 years I was there but I still left school and went onto Uni.

Also I can't blame parents for wanting to take their kids out of school the last week of term given that no or negligable work is done then unless you count learning to watch DVD after DVD.

Someone should clean up the act of these SNP voters homes.

The latest proposal is that the smegs that skyve off be given millions in benefits/training while the student that succeeds at uni has to borrow money to learn - and even then the loan doesn't meet living costs - need to stack shelves at the summer for the rest.

But not if you're a smeg! Free money, no working or stacking shelves. Scotland has become a race to the bottom. Fail and ye shall win from the system.

Yes, by all means tackle truancy, but this attack on parents for taking holidays is a bit much?

There's only 3,600 which isn't much and I can't think of any two weeks in school, save maybe exam time that couldn't be easily caught up on - seems just like an easy target.

I am more concerned that 22,000 kids are off sick at anyone time!

What's that say about the health of Scotland?

anyone? I meant, of course, any one time. Space bar is a bit sticky.

If we had to miss school, we were given extra work to do, sick or well, in home or on special vacations, with family. As a matter of fact, it was much more than the "in school" students were doing, especially the reading and reports. This makes no sense, keeping the kids out of school for a vacation and then not making them do some extra work. Parents must be consistent about education, and in all things to the child's benefit. Sadly, this doesn't always seem to fit in with this generation of parents, but I mean that in the broadest sense. Parents, teachers, students are overwhelmed, and assaulted from too many different angles, routinely, and it affects the whole dynamic.

The holidays issue is a minor one as far as I am concerned. Most teachers and pupils can cope with these kind of absences.

The type of absenteeism that causes problems is that of the pupil with patchy attendance. We are talking about pupils who will miss at least one or two days every week. Often these absences are authorised - "Wee Jamie had a sore stomach" and so on. It is the parents fault as they allow their children to stay off at the slightest complaint and are complicit in covering up for their malingering offspring. Gone are the days when you had to be hanging from the mantelpiece before you kept off from school - now the smallest sniffle and they are off.

Legally there is little that can be done - the system caters for the long-term absentees but not these inconsistent attenders. It's about time that was changed and procedures brought in that were as stringent as those faced by most adults in their workplaces.

Nick Byrne says its not many who are away but what about those who don't go away and face disruption when the "holiday makers" return? Once again it is a reward for the bad behaviour at a cost to those who support education, as Ayr-Swipe Scut says.

It is our responsibility to support the education of our children and we need to reinforce that by removing child allowances from those with children on unapproved absence (including exclusion for poor behaviour) this is one way we could increase the cost of in school holidays.

A lot of comment has been about holidays abroad; we do have a lot of security at airports and ports why not require an approval from school before allowing pupils to board?

My P7 son has so far missed two (separate) days from school due to illness. However, as my husband's holidays are fixed and seldom fall in with school holidays we have had no choice some years but to take him out of school for a week to allow us some family time together with I think is also important. If we do this then our son does a project on the country we are visiting and learns a little bit of the language. He also catches up with any missed work on his return. This time off is marked as unauthorised absence but in total over the last six years probably amounts to less than some of his classmates absences in one class year. I would prefer not to have to take him out of school and will probably not do so in secondary but at the moment for us the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Liz Smith thinks that truancy is because children are bored with the curriculum. I wonder if she was ever bored with her school curriculum. I certainly was. Most children would rather avoid school if they could get away with it. It's always been like that. It's up to adults to determine what's best for them. The problem is lack of parenting, not lack of interesting schoolwork.

And this more than anything else is what will determine the future of the next generations. Do you think that today's truants will be tomorrow's diligent parents?

Making sure children get their education is far more important than taking them away on holiday. Once they've passed their exams, got jobs and become contributing members of society then they can go on holiday all they like. Why parents feel the need to take children on holiday is beyond me. It must be incredibly stressful and is a waste of time and money when they could be doing something more productive. It's about time management. As for the little neds who play truant, get them into a secure unit so they can't skive and fine the parents heavily....then they won't be able to afford to impose their little horrors on foreign countries.

#17 George
Right on George. Whether children are absent because of truanting, holidays or whatever, it disrupts the routine of the school and undermines the education of other children. The children of conscientious parents in the poorest areas are those who lose most.

Perhaps education has changed (in fact I'm pretty sure it has) but when (or maybe where) I went to school, teachers weren't assaulted, someone being expelled was unheard of and classes went on regardless of who was present - if you took time of you were given extra work to take with you to do at home, or to catch up with when you got back.

There was never any disruption - I missed days at school due to my parents taking me on holdiay - it hardly affected my learning - and I got the benefit of seeing nearly all of continental Europe by the time I was 11.

As I said previously, truancy should be stopped and illness should be looked into but missing at most a week out of the school year due to a holiday is hardly a big deal - if you can't catch up on a week's work there are bigger issues - and at least the parents know where their child is and are reponsible for them.

Should people at work not go ony holiday because of the disruption it causes?

When I was at school in the thirties and forties, truancy was rare. The teachers were good, they knew what they were talking about. I left school at fourteen knowing a damn sight more than the one's leaving at sixteen plus. There is something radically wrong with the schools, the teachers, the pupil's and the teachers.

Homeschooling has none of the problems of state schools ... and distinctly more advantages!

#24 Boy Wonder

"Homeschooling has none of the problems of state schools ... and distinctly more advantages!"

Do you think that most of the parents of today's truants can afford home schooling.

More to the point if they can't be bothered to stop their kids truanting do you think they give a toss?

Yippee BW - my sentments exactly!

Do we not think however that they are targetting an easy section here? Rather than deal with the parents whose kids rarely if ever attend school, they target the ones who make sure their kids go every day except for the time they inform the school that they are removing them for family time (holidays).

I expect a follow up article will appear bemoaning the break down of family time due to pressures of modern life any day now :o/

#25 Home schooling does not have to cost much at all.

Yes it does take a certain type of parent to do it, but do consider WHY some of these kids are truanting. Granted some of them will fall into the hopless category but some will be avoiding school through bullying that the schools seem to be powerless to do anything about.

Oh here we go! another brilliant way to get funds from the ordinary public who are getting screwed already by the powers that be - Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? The people who can afford to see sun during the school holdays will be able to pay the higher rates that the holiday firms charge and the others who can't afford to see sunshine can whistle. Does anyone seriously think that taking a child out of school for one or two weeks during term time will affect that child's future ? will it hang ! Can anyone tell me how parents who can't afford to holiday during the term holidays will manage to pay fines for going away during term time ? which twit thought that up ? and how much are we paying them to figure such ill thought out brainwaves?

Truanting is a totally different thing altogether, that problem needs careful handling. What would help a great deal is giving the kids some idea that respect and punishment for bad behaviour are not bad words - the day that punishment for bad behaviour was stopped was the start of the end and unfortunately it's too late now to do anything about it. I have no idea what the answer is - one thing that we could do though, is have people in charge of problems like this who have experience of bringing up difficult kids, not "goodie two shoes" who look like they are aged about 16 and have not even experienced life and who are just out of uni ! and think they know everything.