George Mudie: Heads should decide over term-term holidays

The Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, should just repeal the regulations that he slipped through when nobody was looking. They have genuinely caused so much pain across the country.

The Guardian took a snapshot of the seasonal price differences. Four nights in lodge accommodation at Center Parcs Woburn Forest, Bedfordshire, has a 51 per cent increase between summer term time and the summer holiday. Disneyland Paris has a seven per cent increase. It is not about foreign flights and foreign people; it is about business and supply and demand.

If we try to regulate prices, we will land ourselves in trouble. A King once said “Bugger Bognor!” – I do not know if I will get into trouble for saying that, but if the King can say it, I think I can say it. Four nights at the Butlin’s resort in Bognor Regis have a 99 per cent increase in cost between the week before schools go off and the week after.

My wife is a head teacher and has been a teacher since I married her. Every family holiday that we have taken has been at the most expensive time. We were both salaried, so we could afford it, but I understand what happens to families on the breadline or families struggling with their mortgage or short-term unemployment. If they have children and want to take a holiday – whether abroad or in this country – they will face inflated prices in the summer holiday.

We are talking about doing things for schools and how we would work out whether to give kids a week off and whether we would need regulations, but I do not know what regulations we would need to regulate prices.

The Labour government tried that in the 1960s and failed miserably. There are offshoots to the issue, because with railways, we have the choice of travelling at peak times or off-peak. The difference in prices is clear. If someone is booking a hotel in London, a Tuesday will have a different price from a weekend. That is business and supply and demand.

It is easy to criticise the people running the business, but they have to make a profit to stay afloat. If they are running below capacity in the other 46 weeks of the year, they have to even things out when they hit capacity, just to stay in business. Therefore I see some genuine difficulty in doing that.

I have discussed this matter – more than anything else this past week – with my wife, and all I get is common sense.

Head teachers have great discretion, great judgment – on the whole – and great empathy. They have great relations with parents and know them. They can look at the attendance records.

Due to the fuss that has gone on and the hurt that has happened, why should the Government not just take the measure off the table? The Secretary of State has caused it, so he has in his hands a remedy. If he wants change, he should get together with all the parties. Even the travel trade is saying that it has to lay people off because the measure is affecting its business.

The first bad thing the Secretary of State did was to push through the measure to operate from last September, but people had already made their arrangements for holidays. They had taken the advice of the travel trade and got in quick, seeking the cheapest bookings. Suddenly, it was illegal to do so. There was no consultation.

The second bad thing is that the Secretary of State will fine the parents £60 and it could be £120 if they are late in paying. For some of the parents of children in my wife’s school £60 or £120 is more than they have to keep their family fed, clothed and housed.

If you think that that is bad, the Secretary of State has made the action a criminal offence. Not only will parents get fined for taking the chance to bond with their kids on a beach somewhere, they can get a criminal record because of it. It is not just a case of what happens with picking chewing gum up off the floor, when neighbourhood wardens can give out a £60 fine: there is a criminal record.

What is there to worry about in this? Ofsted inspectors can go into schools – the professionals, no matter how good they are, are frightened stiff of Ofsted – and see all the records. They can go through every one and look at whether the parents of a child with an exemplary attendance record will be fined because, to go away together, they must take the time during term.

Ofsted has attendance and performance figures. All the necessary machinery is available to enable a responsible head to take the decisions in the full knowledge of what happens in the school and, most importantly, to be answerable to Ofsted for which youngsters have been given permission.

George Mudie is the Labour MP for Leeds East who spoke in a Commons debate on holiday pricing. This is an edited version.