When it comes to whether parents should take their children to spend holidays during term-time, views on the issue vary from person to person. Parents claim that by doing so, they can save a lot of money born of busy school holidays. Educational officials strongly oppose this tendency on the ground that it encourages truancy, which in turn damages a child’s education. From my perspective, the merits of banning term-time holidays outweigh its demerits.
To begin with, taking tough measures on this kind of truancy is conducive to the normal teaching process, one of the key elements to guarantee kid’s academic performance. As we know, currently, teachers have the discretion to approve a certain time of absence from school for each child, which is supposed to be for illness and is not supposed to be granted for holidays. By definitely abolishing the right of head teachers to “authorize absence” from the classroom, those teachers can rarely be pestered by parents who want to take children to go on a holiday just to save money, which severely disrupts teaching process. What ‘s more, without strict penalties imposed on the parents who lead to their kid’s playing truant, those parents can gradually view asking for holiday leave as a right. Once this cultural expectation is formed, the level of truancy will dramatically increase.
Accordingly, the growing trend of term-time holidays should be banned with no delay. In this way, teachers can impart knowledge without disturbance and parents will be deterred from saving money at the expense of sacrificing their kid’s education.