Saturday 14 May 2011

The 'Ibiza Loophole'


I have explained before that when my oldest daughter was at primary school, we used to withdraw her from school for one day a week in order to make sure that she at least received some sort of education in basic literacy and numeracy. This was in addition to the four or five occasions a year when we went off for anything from a long weekend to a fortnight to stay on a farm in the Brecon Beacons. Haringey, our local authority, were not happy about all this. If readers think that I am a bit of a stroppy bastard when dealing with home educators, then they should see me in action against a council which is failing to provide a decent standard of education to a child! I regularly invited Haringey to prosecute me if they wished me to air my grievances publicly in court. Strangely, they never took up this invitation.




Why should somebody like me, a man almost fanatically keen on education, be prepared to take regular holidays in term time in this way? The answer is simple. In the course of a fortnight in South Wales when one of my daughters was ten and the other six, we visited the Roman gold mine at Dolaucothi, went down the coal mine at Blaenavon, spent the day at Caerphilly Castle, went for another day out to the Roman amphitheatre and museum at Caerleon, visited the National Museum in Cardiff, climbed mountains, went pony trekking, actually witnessed the birth of a calf and fed lambs from bottles. This is not by any means an exhaustive list. On another holiday, the girls went gliding, being able to take the controls when they did so. Compare this with the nonsense that my older daughter would have been doing had she been cooped up in school during that time and there was no contest at all as to which was the more educational use of her time.




One might have supposed that there was not a home educating parent in the country who would fail to understand this and agree with the value of such real life experiences. One would be wrong. Amazingly, a number of high profile home educators and former home educators, including people like Ian Dowty and Mike Fortune-Wood, are opposed to this sort of thing. They believe that children who are registered pupils at schools should be discouraged from spending time out in the real world with their parents. So strongly do they feel about this that they have been lobbying parliament in the last few weeks, warning them of the dangers of any legislation which might make actions such as those I took, easier for parents!



Let us just pause for a moment and consider this extraordinary state of affairs. As far as I am able to understand it, those who have been campaigning about the change in the pupils registration regulations, the one which would require a twenty day 'cooling off' period before deregistration became final, are saying this. They are claiming to be concerned about the prospect of children spending more time in the real world, doing things with their parents. They believe that those children would be better off in school. I think that I have this right. The expression which is being popularised by home educators for the supposed danger of an increase in the practice of taking children on holiday during term time, is the 'Ibiza Loophole'. Readers who find it hard to believe that any home educator could really worry about kids spending more time in their parents company should google this expression and see what I mean.



Why the 'Ibiza Loophole', one wonders? Why not the 'Welsh Farm Holiday Loophole'? The answer is simple, if a little distasteful. This is snobbishness upon an epic and heroic scale. Ibiza symbolises all that the middle class people who are using this phrase feel about the working classes. Forty years ago, they would probably have called it the 'Torremolinos Loophole'. If they were running this campaign before World War II, they would have described it as the 'Skegness Loophole'. The people using this awful expression believe that working class people are different from them. People like us, respectable home educators, take our children on educational trips to the right sort of place. But the working classes my dear, you wouldn't believe where they go! I mean, Ibiza! it's nothing but sand, sea, sun and sangria. Why don't we use them as examples of the sort of people whose holidays should be restricted and made more expensive? Never mind that this would mean shamelessly blackguarding another group of parents for our own purposes. After all, the sort of people that go to Ibiza are clearly not our type.




There is something singularly unedifying at seeing home educators behaving in this contemptuous way towards parents with whom they feel they have nothing in common. Speaking for myself, I think that most maintained schools are pretty hopeless and that many children would learn more in the course of a holiday with their parents than they would being stuck in a classroom. Can it really be true that most home educators feel differently?

43 comments:

  1. I think, from past conversations in various places, that all of the people you mention would value term time holidays for school children at least as highly as you do. Obviously this isn't the issue. The issue is the likelihood of laws being brought in to combat this 'problem', because LAs and MPs do not appear to agree with you and I about the benefits and advantages of holidays over school and consider these children to be missing education. The result would be a short lived loophole (so school children would not benefit for long), and in all likelihood, a much more difficult de-registration process as a result of attempts to weed out genuine home educators from those who value term time holidays.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Why the 'Ibiza Loophole', one wonders?"

    Maybe I'm naive or it's my working class roots showing, but I didn't see this as a negative choice of location. I saw it as a desirable location. Admittedly I've not researched Ibiza so I know nothing about it. We've gone to mainland Spain and other islands in the past. Maybe if I knew more about Ibiza I would agree with you. But maybe the person who suggested the phrase thought of Ibiza in the same way as I do?

    You always seem to assume the worst of motives in others and the best of motives in yourself, as this whole blog article shows yet again. You are the only one capable of seeing the value of holidays in term time whereas all the other people you name want to stop them just for the hell of it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "So strongly do they feel about this that they have been lobbying parliament in the last few weeks, warning them of the dangers of any legislation which might make actions such as those I took, easier for parents!"

    These parents are attempting to defend home education and de-registration on demand because they value HE as it is and wish to preserve it for future beneficiaries. If you feel so strongly about the benefits your family gained as a result of term time holidays, you could do worse than consider emulating them and campaign for school using parents to have the right to take term time holidays. Do something positive instead of negative for a change. It would be of especial help to working class families of course because of the huge jump in costs in the school holidays, so you would be helping two groups you value, school children and the working class.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 'You always seem to assume the worst of motives in others and the best of motives in yourself'

    As opposed to others, who always regard their own motives as base and unworthy, while recognisng the altruistic and high-minded motivations of those around them.

    'You are the only one capable of seeing the value of holidays in term time whereas all the other people you name want to stop them just for the hell of it.'

    I don't suppose for a moment that any of the people I name wish to stop such holidays. They don't care at all about the parents of school children taking mid-term holidays; using this as an example to support their arguments is just cynical opportunism.

    ReplyDelete
  5. 'These parents are attempting to defend home education and de-registration on demand because they value HE as it is and wish to preserve it for future beneficiaries'

    I see. And following Clausewitz's famous dictum that the best defence is attack, they feel that the most effective way of defending their chosen lifestyle is by attacking other parents. Yes, I quite understand this.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "They don't care at all about the parents of school children taking mid-term holidays; using this as an example to support their arguments is just cynical opportunism."

    Not at all. The risk of draconian countermeasures was one of the main dangers involved in introducing the 20-day delay. If they had used the argument just to prevent school children gaining the short lived benefits of term time holidays whilst not protecting HE in any way, I would agree with you. But the long term disadvantages to home educators completely outweighed the short term advantages to school children.

    "And following Clausewitz's famous dictum that the best defence is attack, they feel that the most effective way of defending their chosen lifestyle is by attacking other parents. Yes, I quite understand this."

    The object was not attack, they were defending the right all families (including all those you appear to be defending) to de-register from school on demand. Your perceived attack is incidental and the 'benefit' to school children would have been tiny and short lived.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "Your perceived attack is incidental and the 'benefit' to school children would have been tiny and short lived."

    Yes, and those benefits would have been short lived not because of those nasty home educators who hate school children and don't want them to be able to afford to go away on holiday, but because the authorities are unable to see the value of holidays over time spent in schools. Go and tell them Simon, if you are so concerned for these children.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You have to admit that 'Welsh Farm Holiday Loophole' isn't as catchy as 'Ibiza Loophole'. There is also the point that the farm holiday may well have educational value whereas Ibiza is more associated with sunbathing and general lounging around. It was necessary to pick somewhere outside of UK jurisdiction so that it was more difficult for an LA officer to turn up with legal paperwork.

    As for why Ibiza in particular, I don't remember. I guess it happened to be in the news for some reason the day I wrote to my MP back in 2009 and I used it as the example.

    We always used to take term-time holidays when I was at school. I think back then it was realised that holidays took place when the working parent (usually the father, this was the 70s) was able to get time off work and everything fitted around that. I also had the occasional day trip, so I got to visit a coal mine and various other interesting places. I asked my father not that long ago whether he got permission from the school and he said that he never bothered asking them.

    If you believe that children should be able to take time off school for educational activities with their parents then you should campaign for that. The 20-day rule was not intended to be used for that purpose and we were merely pointing out to government that it would destroy their existing truancy policy.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "Go and tell them Simon, if you are so concerned for these children."

    But he's not concerned for them. He just doesn't like the people he names and invents reasons to attack them at every opportunity. Talk about cynical opportunism.

    ReplyDelete
  10. You're already an irritable middle-aged man, take care you don't become a bitter and twisted old-man.

    ReplyDelete
  11. "they feel that the most effective way of defending their chosen lifestyle is by attacking other parents. "

    They're merely keeping the system intact so that it can't be used against them. The other parents are already voting with their wallets - a £200 fine for taking children on a term-time holiday compares favourably to saving £1000 on the cost of that holiday by going off-peak. Government could raise the level of the fine if they really wanted to discourage the activity but turn a blind eye because they'd have a much bigger challenge if they really clamped down.

    ReplyDelete
  12. 'the long term disadvantages to home educators completely outweighed the short term advantages to school children'

    In other words, if the end is lawful, then this justifies the means. I can't quite agree with you there.

    'the 'benefit' to school children would have been tiny and short lived.'

    You have evidently used something akin to the Utilitarian idea of the calculus for happiness to work this out. Tell me, how did you actually carry out the calculation in this case? You are very sure that the benefits to schoolchildren would be outweighed by the harm caused to home educated children; could you explain the facts and figures which you used to come to this conclusion and also how you balanced the happiness of one group against the misery of another?

    'Go and tell them Simon, if you are so concerned for these children'

    I have done so many times in the past, not least in a book actually aimed at professionals in the field of education.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Dave H, I am glad that you have turned up! You said the other day that you actually coined the expression 'Ibiza Loophole'. Since I was speculating about this, could you set our minds at rest and explain why you chose Ibiza and not any other holiday destination?

    ReplyDelete
  14. "could you explain the facts and figures which you used to come to this conclusion and also how you balanced the happiness of one group against the misery of another?"

    Obviously there are no facts and figures, just likelihoods going by past experience. But then, can you tell me how many children those nasty home educators would have prevented from going on holiday? You must think it's a reasonable number if it justifies this bleating blog post.

    ReplyDelete
  15. "Since I was speculating about this, could you set our minds at rest and explain why you chose Ibiza and not any other holiday destination? "

    Errr, did you read what he wrote?

    ReplyDelete
  16. 'He just doesn't like the people he names and invents reasons to attack them '

    A bit loopy. I am not over fond of Mike Fortune-Wood, it is true. I have no feelings either way about Ian Dowty, never having had any dealings with him.

    ReplyDelete
  17. '"Since I was speculating about this, could you set our minds at rest and explain why you chose Ibiza and not any other holiday destination? "

    Errr, did you read what he wrote?'

    Yes, a few days ago he said that he devised the expression 'the Ibiza loophole'. I was asking why he chose Ibiza. I don't understand your question; are you saying that Dave H did not invent this phrase? The plot thickens!

    ReplyDelete
  18. 'Anonymous said...
    You're already an irritable middle-aged man, take care you don't become a bitter and twisted old-man.'

    Sound advice indeed, Anonymous. Tragically though, it is a decade or two too late. If only I had met you when I was forty five, I could perhaps have avoided this!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous wrote

    'Errr, did you read what he wrote?'

    Simon wrote

    'Yes, a few days ago he said that he devised the expression 'the Ibiza loophole'. I was asking why he chose Ibiza. I don't understand your question; are you saying that Dave H did not invent this phrase? The plot thickens!'

    You may be a stroppy bastard but you're not very perceptive.

    READ what Dave H wrote (15 May 2011 02:19):

    'As for why Ibiza in particular, I don't remember. I guess it happened to be in the news for some reason the day I wrote to my MP back in 2009 and I used it as the example.'.

    Do keep up.

    ReplyDelete
  20. 'Do keep up.'

    One of us needs to. Dave H said a few days ago, and I have no reason to doubt his word, that he dreamed up the phrase 'Ibiza loophole' some while ago. I asked him today why he chose Ibiza and he then told me. I am unable to see what you are driving at here.

    ReplyDelete
  21. If you read the comments thread, I did answer your question before you asked it. Too much Dr Who?

    ReplyDelete
  22. I have never thought this 'Ibiza loophole' was much of an argument, to be honest. The main deterrent when it comes to people taking their children on holiday in term time is that it irritates the school - not the threat of any legal action. This is because, as Simon says, schools aren't generally that keen on pursuing legal action. If irritating the school is what deters most people then I can't imagine them de-registering their child as a tactic to get a term-time holiday. Can you imagine how popular that would make you with the school?

    ReplyDelete
  23. If you can save £1000 compared to the same holiday out of term time then irritating the school is going to be minor. I suspect that the vast majority won't takje advantage, but those who were on the edge might decide to take advantage of it.

    Also note that we're playing this one by Parliamentary rules, and we won the first round.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Well the law is the law and if it had changed to say that I could deregister my child and have the place still open when I got back from either a lounging around OR an educational holiday, then I would have done this.

    Currently you either face a stern word or a fine- or lie.

    Change the reglulations and the Head and LA would have nothing they could rightly say.

    I think maybe home educators were pointing out that compared to government policy and the current regulations, there was an itsy bitsy contradiction in the proposed regulation ;>)

    Did anyone actually comment that parents ought not to use the proposed regulation?

    I would think that most people, home educators included think it is madness that the government's opinion is to indicate to parents that a child's education would go to wrack and ruin if they had an extra 2 week break from it- so much do that there is a rrgul;ation and fine in place!

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