#term-time-absence

#term-time-absence

In the UK, Statutory Maternity Pay is paid for up to 39 of those 52 weeks. For the first six weeks, you get 90% of your average weekly earnings (before tax) and then £187.18 or 90% of your average weekly earnings (whichever is lower) for the next 33 weeks. The final 13 of those 52 weeks are unpaid.

Members of the Dáil's Education Committee stated that Irish curriculums are 'overloaded' and must be reduced, advocating for a focus on nature and outdoor activities.

New York City K-12 students with perfect attendance are on track this year to be in school for 1,102 hours. That's about 20 fewer days than the national average, per the study, of about 1,231 hours in school each year.

By asking pupils to conceal their identities through the use of fake names and/or fake email addresses, and by instructing them not to tell the school, Rai acted in a way that lacked the integrity expected of a teaching professional.

Oakland Unified School District leaders see attendance rates as critical to their plan to address a $100 million budget gap. Increasing attendance by even 1% overall could add $5 million in revenue. That's because state funds, which make up the biggest pot of money for the district, are based on a funding formula that uses students' average daily attendance rates. Raising attendance a few percentage points could mean millions more for a district searching for a way out of its structural deficit.

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One in three graduates who are out of work and claiming benefits say poor health is preventing them from finding employment, as new analysis highlights mounting concern over the value of some university degrees and the UK's approach to skills training. Research by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) shows that 707,000 graduates are now claiming benefits, a 46 per cent increase since 2019.

I am at the end of my tether with my three children. They are eight, 11 and 13 and every morning it is a giant battle to get them up out of bed and ready for school. I have tried everything - I have their clothes laid out, their breakfast on the table, their bags packed and their lunches made.

The campaign groups, The Dad Shift and Movember, said hundreds of thousands of families were falling apart as a result of a parental leave system described by MPs as one of the worst in the developed world. A survey commissioned by the groups found that 69% of single parents said the UK's two-week, low-pay paternity leave made it harder to share parental responsibility, exacerbating gender inequalities.

A record 459,288 school holiday fines were issued in England last year, according to new figures from the Department for Education (DfE). The number of term-time holiday fines rose by 4% in 2024-25 when compared with the previous year, and accounted for 93% of all fines issued for unauthorised school absence. It is the first set of data issued which includes a change in the rules on holiday fines from 2024, which increased the value of each fine from 60 to 80 per parent, per child.

But as schoolage audiences of Matilda the Musical or the Harry Potter films can testify, UK classrooms usually have more children in them than fictional ones. What these young people probably do not know is that their classrooms are also fuller than many real ones abroad. A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that the UK has some of the largest primary groups in the industrialised world.

Schools should be phone-free throughout the entire day, the education secretary has told headteachers in England, stressing that pupils should not use the devices even as calculators or for research. Bridget Phillipson wrote to schools to underline updated guidance issued by the government last week, according to the BBC. Schools should make sure those policies are applied consistently across classes, and at all times and we want parents to back these policies too, Phillipson said.

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A major row between government departments has broken out after the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) proposed cutting all its funding for physical education in schools, the Guardian understands. The DHSC is now intending to restore the funding despite insisting privately for weeks that it would end its contribution, until the Guardian contacted the department. Ministers are understood to have overruled the cuts.

The Australian Education Union (AEU) is recommending a 30.4 hour job-share model in state schools to expand working from home options for teachers, while keeping kids at school five days a week. The union has warned the government will need to get creative to ensure roles that can't be done from home are still appealing. Under the proposal, if you can reasonably do your job from home, you would have the right to do so for at least two days a week.

"It's just like a neverending game of musical chairs," Jensen says. Just when a teacher thinks they've perfected their seating chart, two neighboring students will have a fight, others won't stop talking or parents will email with their own seating preferences. "There's just so many things that you don't know on the surface that come to light really quickly once you put a kid next to another one," she says.

It is, officially, just a small part of wider guidance for schools and colleges, titled Keeping Children Safe in Education, which covers everything from the basics of safeguarding, checks on staff and dealing with harassment. The section on students who might question their gender covers about five of the document's 201 pages, guiding institutions about what they should do in such circumstances. Unlike the previous guidance it is statutory it must be followed. It is currently being consulted on, and so will not come into force until September. The DfE says it will then be reviewed annually.