But Smedley: as has been explained, parents CAN request to take their kids out of school for holidays. There are a number of discretionary days that the school can approve. The problems occur when the school is given no advance warning, if the student is already lagging behind in their work, or if it's during an important exam period.

We regularly took our daughter out of school because my ex-husband's job meant that we often had to travel during term-time. The schools never had a problem with this, and did indeed regard travel as a valuable learning experience.