Double standards are being applied to parents who take their children out of school for holidays, claims a former teacher.

Some Kirklees parents are being fined for absences of a week or two while others remove their children from school for months on end with no consequences.

The claim is made by retired teacher Dinah Bentley who taught in Huddersfield and Dewsbury for 36 years until she retired in July 2012.

She claims that she has seen at first hand the system which allows some parents to take their children out of school for up to six months without any negative consequences.

Mrs Bentley, 67, of Shepley, says that she is “incensed” at the unfairness of what is currently going on in Kirklees and is calling for the council to introduce a ‘one rule for all’ system.

The former teacher, whose last job was in secondary education in Dewsbury, claims it was common practice for some Asian parents to take their children out of school and back to the Indian sub continent to meet their family and learn about their country of heritage. This was sanctioned by headteachers and from her conversations with other teachers, she believes the practice is widespread across Kirklees.

At the same time, other parents were fined for going on holiday for a week with their children during term time. Some were also threatened with the removal of their child from the school roll.

“I feel very, very strongly about this; it is completely unfair,” said Mrs Bentley. “There are various classifications for absences from school and there is one which allows an extended family holiday at the headteacher’s discretion. This is being used to authorise long periods of absence from school.

“We had lots of children who disappeared from school for months and when they returned they had forgotten a lot of what they had learned.”

Mrs Bentley feels so angry about the injustice of the system, which she believes is being used to play the ‘statistics game’ to show less unauthorised absences, that she wrote to Ed Balls when he was Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. She said that she got a “ridiculous reply from a minion” which went no way addressed her questions.

“I am aware that this is a very sensitive issue,” she said. “But this is not about racism, it is about double standards. The same principles should apply to all parents.”

Mrs Bentley was married to a Kurdistani Muslim and taught in Iraq. One of her pupils was Saddam Hussein’s son.

She believes that children benefit from taking family holidays, they can take school work with them and that parents should not be penalised for short absences.

She added: “Kirklees should stop fining some parents and allowing others to take their children away for months at a time. It is not on.”

A Department for Education spokesman said: “Headteachers are free to grant pupils leave in exceptional circumstances and it is for them to decide whether to grant time off.

“We recognise the challenges facing parents to fit holidays around their jobs and that’s why we are giving schools the flexibility to set their own term times so they can change term dates to ones that work for their pupils and families. Many schools are already taking advantage of this.”

Changes to the law in April which came into effect from last September in England mean headteachers would not grant leave of absence during term time unless in exceptional circumstances.

It is for headteachers to determine how many days a pupil can be away from school if the leave is granted, so individuals shouldn’t book family holidays in term times.

Previously, headteachers could grant leave for the purpose of family holiday in ‘special circumstances’ for up to 10 school days leave per year, longer in exceptional circumstances.

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