Parents’ fury as school governor takes daughter out of class to save £5,000 on Costa holiday
WITH travel firms jacking up prices during school holidays, many parents have been tempted to take their children abroad in term time instead.
The education authorities frown on such behaviour. But now one school governor has broken ranks.
Paul Lawton ignored anti-truanting laws to take his 13-year old daughter Lucie-Ann out of school for 11 days so they could enjoy a fortnight in Spain.
Other parents have accused him of setting a bad example but Mr Lawton, a farmer, said he was too busy with work in the summer months, and had also wanted his daughter to visit her godfather, who has cancer.
The father of five added that he had saved £5,000 on the break on the Costa del Sol by going during term time.
Mr Lawton, 42, said: ‘To go when we did cost us £1,200 to fly the whole family
Dad who went to war over half-term holiday rip-offs
From yesterday’s Mail
of seven to Spain with flights and transfers. If we had gone three weeks later it would have been £6,000 and we can’t afford that.
‘I think the Government should stop this ridiculous rip- off. Some people aren’t fortunate enough to be able to spend £5,000 to go away for two weeks.
‘When I see the prices before and after the school holidays, I’m annoyed. It makes it impossible to go and explore Europe.’
But some parents at the 800-pupil Macclesfield Academy in Cheshire, where Mr Lawton is a governor, were outraged after holiday photos emerged of the family at the resort.
One said: ‘Parents are constantly bleated at about taking their kids out of school to go on holidays and he of all people should know about that.
‘Even though we are left virtually broke due to the hike in holiday prices during non-term time, most of us toe the line because we don’t want to get into any trouble. What he’s done has made a mockery of the school.’
When Mr Lawton returned from Spain his own school requested that he and his wife Emma, 33, be issued with a fixed penalty notice of £60 each by the local education authority under anti-truanting laws.
They did not pay and were taken before magistrates where they both admitted a charge of failing to ensure their child attended school and were each fined £120 with £50 costs and £20 victim surcharge.
Cheshire East Council said the schoolgirl was absent without proper authority over 11 morning and 11 afternoon sessions between July 9 and 22 last year. Mr Lawton told the magistrates: ‘We went to see my foster father who has cancer and whose health is only expected to deteriorate. We could ill afford to go, but my daughter is his goddaughter and he wanted to see her.’
But magistrate David Coulston told him: ‘As a governor, you should have known better of the protocols of the school.’
Yesterday Mrs Lawton said the holiday had been their first since the couple’s honeymoon in Egypt. Her husband said he believed he was being singled out because he was a governor, adding: ‘When I booked the holiday I wasn’t a governor. I didn’t come on board until May 2013 and booked the holiday in 2012.’
Macclesfield Academy headmaster Richard Hedge said fixed penalty notices were issued by the council when pupils missed five days or more. He added: ‘We would not make special allowance for a governor or for anybody else.’
George Wilson, chairman of gov- ernors, said a decision on any action would be made after a meeting next month.
A survey for yesterday’s Daily Mail showed that some holidays will more than double in price during half-term next month.
We also reported the case of Paul Cookson, 41, from Devon, whose complaint about the rising cost of a planned Center Parcs holiday with his daughter, seven, was shared 143,000 times by other parents.
BASED on my first and (please God) last visit to Center Parcs, my best advice to Paul Cookson would be: don’t go — at any price. Yes, I know that a great many families love their time at the company’s prison camps, or ‘villages’ as it likes to call them.
It may also be that things have changed since we took our four boys for a grim stay, 13 years ago, at stalag Elveden Forest in Suffolk. All I can say is that I’m not in the least bit tempted to go back to investigate.
Mr Cookson, as half the world now knows, is the sales director from Chillington, Devon, who struck a chord with millions of parents this week after he vented his spleen on the internet over Center Parcs’ policy of increasing its prices dramatically during school holidays.
He had wanted to book a half-term break for his seven-year-old daughter, Phoebe, but found that the cost of a £699-a-week prefab prison hut (sorry, ‘comfort twobedroom villa’) at Sherwood Forest village shot up by £300 to £999 as soon as the schools broke up.
Fuming with rage, he shared his feelings with his 250 followers on Facebook: ‘I am sick to death of being ripped off with this country. I choose not to take my daughter out of school term away on holiday and stick to the set school holidays — but why should I be penalised by doing the correct thing as a parent???
‘It’s becoming a joke and it’s time parents should take a stance to these corporate money-grabbing monsters . . .’
Rules
He ended his message with the exhortation: ‘SHARE THIS POST IF YOU HAVE ALSO HAD ENOUGH’.
And, boy, did the parents of Britain rally to his call. The long and the short of it is that, before he made his appeal, a direct. gov online petition calling on Parliament to ban holiday companies from charging extra during school holidays had attracted only about 3,000 signatures.
The last time I looked yesterday, that number had rocketed to 149,307 — well over the 100,000 required to make the Commons authorities consider a debate. And it was rising with every click on the refresh button.
But back, for the moment, to my own experience of Center Parcs — which, of course, is far from the only holiday company that ramps up its prices when school’s out. They all do it (though, for obvious reasons, those that cater particularly for children are the worst offenders).
I should admit from the outset that I didn’t have to pay a penny for the rent of my family’s villa.
Against my better judgment, I’d surrendered to the demands of my wife and my then employers that I should accept an invitation from the management, with a view to writing about our stay.
I warned the company’s PR people that, from the little I’d heard about it, Center Parcs didn’t sound a bit like my cup of tea.
I’ve never been much of a one for rules, regulations, organised activities or bicycling through the woods in the October drizzle (this was the half-term before Christmas). But they were most insistent, assuring me I’d be pleasantly surprised. And with Mrs U pointing out that we had nothing else planned for half-term, and not a bean in the bank, I resigned myself to my fate.
After all, it would only be for a couple of nights — and it couldn’t be all that bad, could it? Oh, yes it could.
Even before we set off, the arrival through the post of the bossyboots Center Parcs rulebook began to confirm my fears: ‘No excessive, rowdy, offensive or illegal behaviour . . . Respect all facilities and the environment . . . Appropriate clothing and footwear should be worn in public places . . .’
Most ominous was this, on page 109: ‘ Following a recent increase in the unauthorised use of cars and parking on the village, we have reluctantly decided to introduce a tow-away scheme.’ Help! Would we ever get out? There was a distinctly Teutonic whiff about all this — and on the way up the M11, the boys and I entertained ourselves by talking in German accents (all right, Center Parcs started life in Holland, but there’s no need to be pedantic): ‘Achtung, schweinhund! Zat foot-vear is inappropriate! Report to ze camp commandant immediately!’
Filthy
Otherwise, my memories of that holiday include: filthy, overpriced food, which seemed to have the same caramel taste, whether it was masquerading as pasta in the Mediterranean-themed restaurant or a burger in the Wild West diner; a shop with very little on sale, all of it costing well over the going rate in the outside world; a strong smell of swimming pool and caramel hanging around the vast, domed ‘sub-tropical paradise’, heated to a constant 29.5c (bliss in the open air by the Med, but somewhat uncomfortable indoors in Suffolk).
I also remember a permanently, creepily smiling waitress, constantly dropping our boys’ first names into every sentence she addressed to us.
At first, I thought this was a nice, personal touch — until she handed us a score-sheet at the end of our meal, on which we were asked to score her performance from one to five. One of the categories was ‘Learned and used guests’ names if appropriate’. Perhaps not so personal after all.
But what I found most oppressive about Center Parcs — and this is the sheer, commercial genius of the operation — was the near impossibility of escape.
After unloading the luggage at our villa, we were obliged by those strict rules to leave the car in a vast car-park, 20 minutes’ walk through the drizzle to the centre of the village.
For the duration of our stay, we were effectively captives, forced to pay exorbitant prices for the filthy food and the goods in the camp shop.
To be fair, I should also record that the boys, then aged seven to 16, had a great time, much enjoying the pool and the cycling. But, oh, the sacrifices we adults endure for our children!
Which brings me back to Mr Cookson’s complaint and that online petition. And here, I must leap to Center Parcs’ defence.
True, every parent of young children in the land will share his frustration over the huge price increases in the school holidays (and I count my blessings that the problem is behind me, now that the boys are grown up).
Bust
But surely he must realise that the solution as proposed in the petition — a statutory cap on the percentage by which prices can be raised — just wouldn’t work.
Center Parcs cuts its prices during termtime because, frankly, it’s not a very attractive destination for adults without children. But if it kept them low all year round, by order of Parliament, it would simply go bust.
The alternative would be to raise its prices while children are at school, so as to even out the differential. But then even fewer would visit during term-time. Again, it would be staring bankruptcy in the face.
Indeed, fluctuations in price between the high and low seasons are a classic example of the way in which Government regulations — in this case, statutory termtimes — distort a free market.
The problem has become even more acute since the authorities began cracking down hard on truanting — as school governor Paul Lawton and his wife discovered to their cost when they were fined £60 each, with another £70 costs, for allowing their 13-year-old daughter to skip school for 11 days so they could fly to the Costa del Sol.
Of course, if parents were allowed to take their children on holiday whenever they pleased, Center Parcs’ prices would soon level out. But I’m not suggesting that’s the answer. For although teachers probably exaggerate the perils of missing a few days of school, I can see that it causes disruption.
A better solution might be the French one of staggering school holidays by region, so that children in the North take them at different times from those in the South.
But a cap on price increases at half-term? This makes no more sense than Ed Miliband’s plan to cap energy prices for 20 months. We all know we’ll pay dearly for it in the end.
I’m not saying that I’d miss stalag Center Parcs if it went under — though many thousands would. But at my time of life, I know that I’d very much miss gas and electricity in Red Ed’s over-regulated, overpriced, tick-box, gulag Britain.