Our meeting with the Director For Children and Schools for Pembrokeshire and Pembrokeshires ERW rep took place as planned yesterday. Angela Burns AM sent a representative. Simon Thomas AM planned to attend but was unable. There was a lot to discuss in a short time and it will take some time to feed it all back to you. Please bear with us. We will try to post key points from the meeting as and when we can. For now: Kate Evan-Hughes, our new Director for Children and Schools reiterated our message of making your applications for absence to your Headteacher IN WRITING. And the importance of making sure you set out your reasons for requesting absence during term time clearly. Pembs PWAS has produced a template letter you can use as a basis for these letters which you will find in English and Welsh in the Files section of this page. If your written request is declined your route of appeal is to write to the Chair of your schools Board of Governors. The Director for Children and Schools cannot get involved in the individual cases BUT would like a copy of any appeal letter to be sent to her office too please so that the local authority can get a picture of which schools are declining requests and on what grounds. We encourage you to contact us if you are appealing and, if we can, we will help you with your letter of appeal. Regarding recent applications for term time leave which were refused involving children with disabilities and armed forces families. We were told that PCC has now sent a strong message out to their headteachers that armed forces families and families whose members have disabilities may have very strong grounds for approval of term time leave. If this applies to you and your application has been refused, please ask your headteacher to reconsider and then appeal to your Chair of Governors if necessary. Pembs PWAS requested that PCC and ERW drop their recommendation to schools against the authorisation of absence for family holidays. We asserted that there was NO basis in Welsh law or Welsh Government Guidance for this recommendation. The Director and the ERW rep did not contradict this. The Director stated that she believed Estyn inspection processes were the strongest influence on a schools reluctance to authorise absence. Our response was that if that is the case then ERW and PCC would have little to lose by dropping their recommendation against authorisation of absence. They agreed to bring our request to ERW. An Equality Impact Assessment will take place - PCC will send us further details. We will post more soon when time permits... If you want to understand more about our reasons for objecting to restrictions on absence for family holidays you will find our Pembs PWAS position Statement in the files section of this page. It is a work in progress and changes as we receive new information. Any feedback gratefully received!
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 08:13:16 +0000
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