The term-time holiday judgment puts the state, not parents, in charge

SIR – Julia Hartley-Brewer (Features, April 7) says that “holidaying in Disney World isn’t a human right”.

The Supreme Court judgment was about who decides that a child can be off school – not the reason for the absence. It also ignored a long-held position in law that education is compulsory and is, significantly, the responsibility of the parents.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court now appears at odds with its 2016 judgment against the Scottish Named Person policy, when it found that the wellbeing of children was a matter of parental, not state responsibility.

In that judgment the court said: “Individual differences are the product of the interplay between the individual person and his upbringing and environment. Different upbringings produce different people. The first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families, and indoctrinate them in their rulers’ view of the world. Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way.”

There is too much state control over families these days and too much pressure on them as a result. This judgment will increase the number of disputes between families and schools. It is not helpful, it is divisive. Tristram C Llewellyn Jones Ramsey, Isle of Man SIR – The Supreme Court made a proper balance in its decision. The state provides the finance to educate our children. This is in part for the children’s benefit, but is also an investment by the state and its taxpayers, many of whom either have no children or none in education, for the whole country’s future.

Simply for a parent to remove offspring selfishly from a school, for which we all pay, must therefore offend the principle upon which we provide education in the first place.

State education is “free”. I wonder if those who abuse this system would be so cavalier if they were making a direct financial contribution to the education of their children. Bill Graham Letty Green, Hertfordshire SIR – It is cheaper for parents to pay the £60 fine for taking their children on term-time holidays, rather than pay the inflated prices for going during school holidays. Mick Ferrie Mawnan Smith, Cornwall SIR – In 1982 my headmaster gave dispensation for me to spend three weeks of term in India, so that I could meet my grandparents and connect with my ancestry. I returned with a sense of identity and strength of character that no number of conventional classroom experiences could have replicated. Neither did my absence from school militate against my later achievements at the University of Cambridge.

Hence my sympathetic consideration of such requests from parents at the school I now lead. Dr Millan Sachania Head Master, Streatham & Clapham High School London SW16 SIR – Are teachers’ “in-service training days” unlawful now? Ian Anderson Bristol SIR – Having held the office of chairman of governors at a Church of England middle school for a decade, I cannot understand why, in the case before the Supreme Court, there were no school rules made known to all parents, who would be expected to sign their agreement.

The case should have been unnecessary if parents accepted the need for those rules to be maintained. Malcolm Pettit Chichester, West Sussex SIR – Parents paying school fees should not worry about having to pay VAT as well in future. By the time Labour is next in power, today’s schoolchildren will probably be retired. David Fouracre Birmingham