Tuesday night, kids in bed, Year 9 marking on the sofa and two tabs open on the laptop. Same caravan in Kent, same four nights. One tab is October half term. The other is the week after. I won’t tell you the difference because it’ll only wind you up.
Here’s the thing. I’m on both sides of this one. I teach maths at a secondary school in south London, so I can’t take a week off in term time either. I’m also the bloke at the front of the room when a kid comes back from ten days in the sun with a tan and a two page gap in their exercise book. So I have opinions. I’ve also got two kids, Zara and Tobi, and a teacher’s salary, so I get why people do it.
Netmums ran a piece this week asking two people with very different views. Harvey Dhillon, who runs a company called Zmartly, said no if it’s just about price. His line that stuck with me was “A fine is not a price list.” Kate Pook, who runs a family travel company and once took her own daughter out to stretch a May half term, reckons some trips are worth it, but she’d avoid the first weeks of a new school year and exam years. She also said what every parent at the school gate suspects: “It shows how much depends on who’s in charge, and why the rules can feel like a lottery for parents.”
Fair point. The rules themselves are clearer than people think, though.
What the rules actually say in England
The government’s page on school attendance says your child can only miss school if they’re too ill or you’ve got the school’s permission in advance. On holidays it’s blunt: “A holiday is generally not considered an exceptional circumstance.” So go in expecting a no.
Then the fines. Show your working, as I tell Year 9. Under the statutory attendance guidance, updated in July 2026, a school has to consider a fine once a child reaches 10 sessions of unauthorised absence within any 10 school weeks. A session is a morning or an afternoon, so 10 sessions is five school days. They don’t have to be in a row, and late marks after the register closes count too, so the old Wednesday to Wednesday trick doesn’t really work. Councils can also fine below that line if families keep taking short trips to dodge it, as long as their local rules say so.
Asking the head for leave
If you’ve got a genuine reason, ask early, in writing, and give the real reason. A school can’t grant leave after the event. For council run schools, the request has to come in advance from a parent the child normally lives with.
What counts as exceptional? There’s no list. The guidance tells schools to judge each request on its own facts, with no blanket policies that grant leave automatically. If the head says yes, the school decides how many days, which might not be the whole week. Religious observance is separate: a day set apart by the religious body you belong to gets recorded as exactly that, though extra days either side are back to the head.
From the staffroom side, a calm, honest email lands a lot better than a vague one about a family commitment that turns out to have a swimming pool.
What happens if you go anyway
The school records it as a holiday it didn’t grant, which is unauthorised absence. With most absence, schools are meant to try support first. With a holiday there’s nothing really to support, so once the threshold is met the guidance says a fine should normally follow. You pay it to the council, and there’s no right of appeal.
The amounts are £80 per parent, per child, if you pay within 21 days, and £160 if you pay within 28. A second fine for the same child within three years is £160 with no discount. There’s no third fine. After that it goes to the courts, where you could be looking at up to £2,500, a community order or up to three months in prison.
Plenty of families go anyway. The Department for Education’s own figures show 459,300 fines were handed out for unauthorised family holidays in England in the 2024/25 school year. That was 93% of all school absence fines.
Doing the maths
And it really is per parent, per child. Two kids, two parents who both agreed to the trip, that’s potentially four fines. That’s £320 if you pay within 21 days and £640 if you leave it. Do it again within three years and it’s another £640, no discount. All before anyone’s bought a single ice cream.
So the sum is the price gap between the half term week and the week after, minus every fine your household could get. If what’s left is small, it probably isn’t worth the letters and the knot in your stomach when the envelope arrives.
Then there’s the bit no booking site shows you. A few days in Year 4 isn’t life or death. But maths builds on itself, and the kid who misses the start of a topic is often still catching up weeks later.
If you and the kids’ mum live apart
My two do alternate weeks between me and their mum, so I’ve read this bit properly. First, the request for leave should come from a parent the child normally lives with, so if your kids are with you every other weekend, the school may well expect it to come from their mum. Second, fines should usually only go to the parent or parents who allowed the absence, whoever filled in the form. Tell the school in writing before the trip who’s taking the kids and who agreed.
Going abroad is its own thing. You need permission from everyone with parental responsibility, or from a court, to take a child out of the country, and gov.uk is clear that doing it without permission is child abduction. A letter from the other parent with the trip details is usually enough. The exception is a child arrangements order saying the children live with you, which lets you take them for up to 28 days without asking, unless another court order says otherwise. And agree who pays any fines before anybody books anything.
What I’d check before booking
First, your own council’s rules, because each one writes its own code of conduct for fines. You can find your council through gov.uk along with its term dates. Check INSET days too if your kids are at different schools, because they don’t always line up. Zara’s secondary and Tobi’s primary certainly don’t, which I found out the hard way.
Second, the year group. I’m with Kate Pook on the first weeks of a new school year. Zara is five weeks into Year 7 and has only just stopped getting lost on the way to the science block. Exam years are a no from me too. Tobi is in Year 4 and could probably miss a few days without the world ending, but I’m not explaining to an eight year old why his sister has to go to school and he doesn’t.
All of this is England only. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland do it differently, so check with your school before you believe anything you read, including this.
So it’s probably the caravan in Kent, at half term prices. Or, if I lose my nerve at the checkout, the Horniman, the park and beans on toast, which the kids would probably enjoy just as much. Tobi has already asked whether the caravan has wifi. I’ve told him I’ll find out. That’s a lesson for another day.
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