Half of travel trade admit to encouraging term time holidays
One in two travel trade professionals has admitted to encouraging families to take their children out of school to go on holiday, according to a poll by TravelMole.com.
Just over half (51%) of around 1,000 respondents said they encourage families to take term-time trips.
Readers of the online newswire were asked the question in light of a rise in the number of children skipping school to take advantage of cheaper holidays.
According to official figures from the Department for Education, 400,490 pupils missed school for unauthorised holidays last autumn and spring terms, 38,065 more than the previous year.
The rise comes despite a change in the law in 2013 giving local education authorities the power to issue fines of up to £120 to parents.
Since 2013, head teachers are only allowed to give permission for children to miss school in ‘exceptional circumstances’.
More than 50,000 fines were issued in 2014-15, but at least nine councils are believed to have stopped fining parents following a High Court decision to overturn a fine issued to dad Jon Platt, who successfully argued he should have been allowed to take his daughter out of school for a family holiday because of her otherwise good attendance record.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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