Should You Take Children Out of School to Travel?

Taking your child out of school to travel can have many benefits. However, it can also hinder their academic progress in school. We discuss the pros and cons in the article below. 

Travelling with children can be one of the most enriching experiences, both for you and them. Yet doing it in term time can have consequences. Fines can be issued, and key lessons may be missed. So is taking your child out of school to travel actually worth it? We discuss the problem in the article below.

Missing School for Travel

This is an age-old dilemma, and everyone has a different viewpoint on it. From a parent’s perspective, travel broadens the horizons. Your children will learn an awful lot about the world from getting out of their comfort zone and experiencing new cultures. Many people may say the benefits of this outweigh a week or two in formal education.
In this day, parents also have the very practical dilemma of going on holiday when kids are allocated holiday time. Rising prices mean that many families are priced out of any sort of travel whatsoever. This sends people scrambling for holidays in the United Kingdom, only to see they are actually just as damaging to the wallet.

Yet flip the coin and see it the other way. A week out of school can mean a child misses a huge amount of learning. If they are gearing up for exams, or even events like concerts and sports competitions, they then fall way behind. If a child is already struggling to keep up at school, this week can be a huge hole in their term that they may never get back.

Planning the Right Trip

When planning the perfect trip, it is worth shopping around online and booking in advance to save money. Very often, savings can be huge, and booking last minute always means you may not get to do the activity at all. This is particularly pertinent in school holiday times. Websites like Hellotickets.co.uk can help with this and have easy-to-use filters to help you sift through the top activities and attractions. This means you get the best of a destination, along with the best deals for you and the family.

If you have decided to take your child out of school, then you do have a responsibility to ensure the trip is educationally enriching for them. Sitting on a beach or visiting Disney World are probably not good enough reasons to upset your child’s learning. There are many ways you can do this aside from picking the best excursions and trips.

One consideration is to take them to a culture that is vastly different from their own. Another continent perhaps, and then let them take part in local cultures. This means eating the food there, engaging in traditions, and actively learning about the history of the place. Homestays are a great way to do this, as you actually get to live and interact with a real family.

The Benefits of Travel for Children

If you do decide to take your child out of school, you can rest assured that there are benefits to travelling with children. One of the most overlooked is that it helps develop social and personal skills, such as empathy. When people visit other cultures, they look at how people lived there in the past and present. This can help them identify with lives different from their own. Museums are a fantastic way to instil this in your child, particularly living and open-air museums.

Bringing them out into the world also shows them its diverse nature. It can make them more tolerant of others and give them a desire to meet people of different religions, colours, and creeds. In everything from playing with other children to the food they eat, you will see them form a love for the world and people in it.

On a very practical level, it can improve their problem-solving skills. Things will go wrong when you travel, and changes will have to be made. Your child will look at how you deal with this and take it on board. In some instances, they may even be able to help you rectify the situation. Always involving them in decision-making processes can be a great way to do this.

The Drawbacks of Taking Children Out of School

There are drawbacks to taking your children out of school. The most pressing of these is that you may possibly face fines. Guidelines from the government state that fines can be issued if a child has more than five days of unauthorised absence. This fine costs £80 and rises to £160 if it is not paid within 21 days.

Removing your child from school, as previously mentioned, does also damage their education. It may only seem like a few days to you, but if they get sick later in the year or have already had time off, this can be a lot of absence. They may miss key information and learning.

Essentially, there are plenty of educational and developmental reasons for taking your children out of school. However, you should be aware of the learning they are missing. If you do decide to do it, check it is not at important times of the academic year. Make sure the trip is one that will enrich them, and plan in advance.