School Hellidays

Recently there has been a furore surrounding school holidays. Or more particularly holidays outside of school holidays.

There have been a number of articles, including the parent who was fined “over£1000” for taking his children out of school during term-time. Of course, this chap is clearly just trying to make a point and get publicity for what he thinks is a draconian measure – what he doesn’t say, but the article does, is that had he paid on time the fine would have been just £60 per child.

Then there is the petition against holiday companies who inflate prices for non-term-time holidays .

And suddenly parents are up in arms. They are up in arms at the profiteering, and they are up in arms at the draconian regulations and the heavy-handed application.

Now, I speak as someone who doesn’t have children, and who works in an organisation where I am able – nay encouraged – to take holidays during term-time so that priority during school holidays can be given to those who can only take holiday outside of term-time. That said, I’m not bitter about being unable to holiday in July and August due to my lack of off-spring; I’m actually quite objective about it. Yes, I may have restrictions placed upon when I can take holiday; but I don’t particularly want to take much holiday during the restricted times. The payoff that I get for agreeing to those restrictions is cheaper holiday.

So, we’ll start with the regulations.

As I say, parents are up in arms about them. They feel they are excessive. In a free society, so they should be free to take their children out of school to go on holiday. And in a sense they are. Well, not ‘free’, but £60. It’s not much, and it certainly isn’t as much as I would like to see. It means that a term-time holiday is still much cheaper than holiday-time so there is still a cost-benefit incentive to take children out of school.

The regulations changed a few months ago. Previously the headteacher had a lot of discretion to allow children to take term-time holidays. I don’t like discretion. It gets applied unfairly depending upon the mood of any particular person on any particular day. Now the headteacher can only grant term-time time-off in exceptional circumstances. Exceptional circumstances do not include a bargain week at Eurodisney.

Now, I whole-heartedly agree with the regulations. Why? Well, because education is vitally important. It may not sound much – missing one week – but when you factor in that there are only 39 weeks in a school year, and that a few of those diminish due to administration at the beginning and end of terms; sports days; trips and visits; then missing a further week means that the child actually has a lot of catching up to do. Think about it – the child has around 25 hours of actual teaching in a week. That’s 25 hours that the child has to make up, and usually within a short space of time because the learning doesn’t let up – the rest of the class keep going.

And that’s just the child. Taking children out of school doesn’t just impact the child, but the teachers. Each time a child is off, the teacher will have to spend a considerable amount of time in one-on-one tuition with the child, or at the very least preparing a written summary of what happened during the lessons. This is work which simply wouldn’t have to be done if that child was not off. Yes, the teacher would have to do similar if the child was off due to illness or other exceptional circumstances; but that is precisely the point of the regulations. Where it is absolutely unavoidable, then fine; but the burden should not be placed upon the teacher and the child in avoidable circumstances. Think about it – if every child in the class were to take a week off during term-time, that would mean there was one child missing for practically every week of the school year. The impact on the teacher would be excessive. And let's face it - the teacher doesn't get to take time off to take an off-peak holiday. When they enter the teaching profession they accept that as one of the conditions of working, just as I accept that other people will get priority over school-holiday annual leave.

I’ve heard of people arguing that they should have the ‘right’ to take the child out of education for a holiday. Rights also come with responsibilities – and here the responsibility is to ensure the child is not disadvantaged with their education. To be honest, I struggle to see a holiday as a ‘right’; but more as a luxury. That said, I speak as someone who didn’t get a holiday every year, and those that we did were bargain-bucket holidays, camping or driving to France to stay in a self-catered gite. There were no hot, poolside hotels for me. But I’m not bitter.

Anyhow, that’s the regulations dealt with. Then on to the increased costs…

Yes, I admit, there is a degree of profiteering here. But not to the extent made out. And we have to remember, we live in a free market – price is determined by supply and demand. And it isn’t as though there isn’t competition out there: we don’t live in a cartel, we live in a highly competitive market and if one company wants to steal a win over the others it could reduce its prices.

But, of course, it isn’t that simple. To a degree, the families subsidise the holidays for the rest of us. When you look at the profits that the holiday companies make of the course of a year they are not substantial. Tui reported profits of £471m on revenues of £14.7bn. That’s about 3.2% profit. Not much. Centre Parcs made a massive £48m loss in 2012, turning it around to a profit of £18.6m. This is on revenue of £291m – a profit margin of just over 6%. And bear in mind, to achieve this they had to have occupancy of over 97%. So if their prices are double during term time, it must mean that they are making a loss outside?

Well, to an extent. Usually off-peaks are priced to just cover costs; though not always. There are particularly quiet times where the resorts and carriers don’t cover their revenues – where they have to stay open because of the season or to keep their flight slots or such like; or where a total shut-down would end up costing as much in staff wages, electricity, other overheads. Whilst the smaller revenues are still not sufficient to off-set the costs, they still mean less of a loss than zero revenues. And then, of course, there is the expenditure whilst closed off-season. This is when the hotels refurbish themselves; the resort gets the new facilities and there is no income.

So, if pressure were put on the holiday companies to ‘level-out’ prices, the chances are actually not that peak prices would reduce; but more probably that off-peak prices would increase.

And that’s even before you think about the difficulties in trying to force companies to do that in a free market. There are so many factors and variables to take into account. Yes, there is the obvious cost of accommodation and travel; but what about people who build their own packages? Would the regulations similarly apply to incidentals – would your car hire company have to charge the same amount during school holiday? Many of them actually offer cheaper prices during school holidays because demand is low: their primary customers are business customers. It’s very difficult. Someone even suggested that during school holidays, air passenger taxes should be suspended. That only benefits those who holiday abroad – generally the more affluent anyway.

Personally, I am of the opinion that the higher cost of a holiday is one of those cost that has to be accepted as a cost of childhood. I don’t have children, and so I benefit from cheaper holidays in the same way as I benefit from cheaper holidays because I’m only paying for one hotel room, not two/three/four, in the same way I benefit from not having to buy nappies, car seats, high chairs, beds, clothing and such like. I don't get the benefit of having a child, but I don't get the financial burden either.

There is one solution that has been proposed which could work. Changing holidays so that schools are off at different times to other schools – staggering the ‘peak’ times, broadening them out across a much longer period, reducing the demand at any one time. Nottingham City recently proposed this but it was objected to by parents. Why? Because the holidays were at different times to other schools.

Sounds daft, and it is. The argument the parents made against the change was that where they had children in two different schools, they could have two different sets of school holidays. Or if they are a teacher under one local education authority and their children are under another, they won’t get the same holiday. Realistically, how many families will this affect? Probably very few if any. But for those that it does, again this is another factor that you bear in mind when having children and deciding where to live. I’ve seen the notes my mother prepared years and years ago when deciding where to move to when we were young – they included where the local school was; which secondary school catchment area were we in; and where this would mean that the parents would be able to work.

I know that this is a rather controversial topic, and I know that there will be some people who will tell me I don't have children so I don't have the right to an opinion. But if you are proposing changes that will affect my cost of a holiday, then I do. 

The primary concern here MUST be the education of the children. Holidays very much come second to that. And it must be remembered that holidays are not a basic human right but a luxury that you only have if you can afford.