This was published 9 months ago
Opinion
School holidays should be whenever parents say so
Brad Emery
Freelance writerSchool drop-off, work, school pick-up, sports practice, music practice, swimming lessons, weekend sport, housework, shopping ... eat, sleep, repeat.
Sound familiar? And on this treadmill with no kill switch, parents are encouraged by employment advocates and health professionals to closely manage the work-life balance of themselves and their families.
Parents are run off their feet so there should be some flexibility from schools when it comes to taking in-term family breaks.Credit: iStock
What helps, undoubtedly, is the dedication of many underpaid school teachers who work hard to educate our kids and stimulate their love of learning. The teachers at my daughter’s school work their blackboard chalk to a nub in their pursuit of providing the best emotional and academic support for their students.
What doesn’t help is when some school administrations begin to treat parents as if they are their students and attempt to dictate to families how to manage their work-life balance.
Following the recent return of students to class for term three, one public primary school in Sydney’s east sent a tersely worded email to parents reminding them that children should only be allowed to go on a family holiday “during school breaks”.
Parents of Waverley Public School received a note from the school stating that applications for midterm leave would be scrutinised more closely. “Please remember that planned travel should only be taken during scheduled school holidays,” the note read.
School holiday time means endless queues at airports and price gouging in vacation hotspots.Credit: James Alcock
Never mind the price gouging from airlines and accommodation providers that goes on during small school holiday windows. Never mind the cost-of-living crisis that makes affording a holiday during those peak times increasingly difficult for many families on that treadmill. Next time parents at Waverley Public School want to take a mental health break and schedule a few days down or up the coast, in the country or overseas, they’ll be sent straight to the principal’s office.
And what if the “application” is denied? Hefty fines if you go ahead? Surveillance of families to make sure they don’t sneak out of the country? Some scoff at such a notion. However, these types of penalties are real in other parts of the world for parents who decide their family needs a quick break during the semester, for whatever reason.
In the UK, parents are up in arms at local councils who have taken to fining parents for taking kids on midterm breaks. Parents can face fines of £60 ($115) per parent, rising to £120 ($220) each if they are not paid within 21 days and can reach up to £2,500 ($4770) or even imprisonment for up to three months for taking their kids out of school.
One single mum from Essex recently told The Independent that she receives fines of about £60 for taking her children out of school during the term for a family trip, but that the penalties paled in comparison with the thousands of pounds their family saved by travelling out of peak season – a cost that would have prevented them from holidaying during scheduled holidays.
In Germany, police have reportedly been known to check airports for families taking unauthorised school-time holidays, communicating with schools to assess whether absence has been cleared.
I hope this isn’t where we are headed.
Families trying to escape the cities or even the country during the last school holidays were met with utter chaos in the early days of the break, with cancelled flights and lines out the door at major airports. You couldn’t swing a piece of carry-on luggage without hitting a family whose holiday plans had been thrown into disarray by one problem or another with the airlines.
And most Aussie families would have had a similar experience to that single mum in the UK, with ferocious demand for accommodation sending prices through the roof. Compound this with several interest rate rises, rent increases, inflation and the increase in the cost of just about all goods and services and the traditional family school holiday away is becoming a pipedream for many.
Obviously, systemic truancy is a very different issue and there are fines in place in most jurisdictions in Australia designed to put the onus on parents to ensure they are sending their children to school. And rightly so.
However, if safeguarding the work-life balance and mental health of my family means taking a once-in-a-blue-moon trip during the school term when flights, accommodation, petrol and basically everything else is infinitely more affordable, then the potential finger-wagging or email threats from the school administration is not going to prevent me from doing what’s in the best interest of team Emery.
Schools enforcing a Checkpoint Charlie at the school gate when it comes to families spending time together is not in the spirit nor interest of healthy, happy, well-educated children.
Brad Emery is a freelance writer and a former Howard government staffer.