New research by the UK’s fastest growing online independent travel agent has found that almost 31 million lessons are missed by children every year, due to their parents taking them on holiday during term time.

A new study by the travel agency co-founded by ‘Secret Millionaire’ Chris Brown has found that around 31 million lessons are missed by children annually by parents taking them out of school to go on holiday during term time.

The research of 1,722 parents with children in school in England was carried out bywww.sunshine.co.uk, after the site noticed an increase in child bookings for holidays during school term time.

The study found that 16% of children were taken out of school in the past year by parents in order to go on holiday. 78% of parents who had done so had informed the school prior to their child’s absence, but 22% failed to do so; with 69% of these believing they would have been refused the time off.

Of the parents who had taken their children on holiday during term time, nearly two thirds, 64%, said they had wanted to get a ‘cheaper holiday’, as prices are typically much higher during the allocated school holidays. 9% said they preferred going on holiday during term time, because it was ‘quieter’ at the resorts.

43% of the parents asked weren’t aware that they could face fines for taking their children out of school or allowing them time off without the school’s permission. http://www.sunshine.co.uk further questioned the parents who hadn’t taken their children out of school for a holiday in the past year and found that 23% thought they might in the future.

With approximately 7,722,000* children currently in school in England today and 16% of children taken out of school to go on holiday in the past year, sunshine.co.uk wanted to find how many school lessons, on average, have been missed by the pupils.

When asked, ‘How many lessons does your child attend at school each day?’ the average number for pupils was 5. The average length of holiday for parents who had removed their children from school for the trip was 1 week, equating to a total of 25 lessons missed by pupils in a holiday during term time.

When taking into account that around 1,235,520 million children have holidayed during term time in the past year, each missing an average of 25 lessons, that equates to a total potential 30,888,000 lessons missed by pupils in the past year to holidays.

Chris Brown, co-founder of http://www.sunshine.co.uk and recent ‘Secret Millionaire’ on the Channel 4 series, commented on the findings;

“On our site, we saw a recent rise in the number of people booking to take their children abroad at times when the kids are supposed to be at school, so we were really keen to get some kind of insight into how commonplace this was and, more importantly, how many lessons were being missed because of this. As a dad, it’s something I’ve seen happen at school, and was something particularly of interest to me.

“I can see why it’s tempting for some parents to book a holiday during term time, as prices are admittedly much lower than in the peak of the summer holidays. However, thinking outside the box slightly can provide an alternative; for example, if you’d want to avoid having an expensive holiday, look to book something in the October or February half term when it’s much quieter and cheaper than in the middle of summer.”

He concluded, “I would strongly recommend avoiding taking children on holiday during term time, as they can really miss out on some important lessons in their education; whatever age they are.”

LINK http://www.sunshine.co.uk

ENDS

* http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/STR/d000940/OSR152010.pdf

For more information, or to arrange interviews with Chris Brown, please contact Shannon Haigh of 10 Yetis PR Agency on 01452 348211 or email shannon@10yetis.co.uk

Editors Notes

sunshine.co.uk is the UK’s leading online independent travel agent and was founded by Chris Brown and Chris Clarkson, the same people behind Holiday Watchdog which was bought by TripAdvisor in February 2008 for an undisclosed amount of money. Sunshine.co.uk offers low cost holidays and budget flights to destinations all over the world as well as great deals and discounted hotels.

TravelMole recently voted sunshine.co.uk as the best Travel Agency in the 2010 web awards.

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