HOLIDAYS have now become an annual battleground as parents and schools clash over whether children can be taken out of class for family breaks.

Now, after headteachers have called for a crackdown on the growing numbers of local parents who insist on doing taking their children away from their studies, Bolton Council has lowered the trigger for fines. This means parents will have to pay £60 each if their child has five days’ unauthorised absence per term rather than the previous 10 days. Headteachers have the final say on whether an absence is unauthorised or not.

The council carried out a consultation with headteachers across the borough who apparently “overwhelmingly” said that they wanted the trigger reduced for both family holidays and for other unauthorised circumstances.

It’s not difficult to sympathise with parents who face hiked up holiday prices especially during the school summer break. Some of the increases are ridiculous and certainly border on the unethical.

However, to defend the holiday companies – and I don’t really want to – it’s all about business and making a profit and we really shouldn’t expect anything else.

I’m afraid, though, that my support here is all with the schools. It doesn’t take education experts to know that, if you remove children from the classroom and take them away from their studies, it puts them at a disadvantage compared to all the children who remain at their desks.

Consistent education not only ultimately gives children a better chance of getting into good schools and universities, if that’s the route they want to take, but also helps individuals to keep up to class standards of learning.

It doesn’t take much for most of us to recall painful school times when, for one reason or another including illness, we have missed class time and fallen behind in a particular subject. It can be very difficult to catch up and some children simply never do.

It is also selfishly unrealistic, given today’s limited resources in schools, to expect teachers to ensure that individuals catch up what they have missed through holidays in term-time.

Loving parents would defend taking their children out of school by saying that they all need a holiday as a family, that where they are going will be “educational” or that in this summer term “they’re not doing much anyway.”

Sorry you’re kidding yourself and your children will ultimately be the ones missing out.