Mum saves £10,000 by taking kids off school for 9 years on holiday and WILL NOT be fined

Mother Catherine Warrilow, 43, refuses to pay extortionate prices for family holidays and claims she was never fined for taking her children out of school

A mum says she was never fined for taking her children out of school to go on holiday and instead saved £10,000 by traveling at cheaper times.

Mother Catherine Warrilow refuses to pay the extortionate prices during the school holidays, so she’s taken her two children out of class for the past nine years and has never had a problem.

The 43-year-old says she won’t be taking her children Noah, 14, and Sully, 9, out of school for long. They are usually absent “a few days at most” around mid-February or in the summer near the summer holidays, reports My London.

Speaking to My London, she said: “We feel comfortable as a family that our children’s education will not suffer as a result, we are happy to make that decision. The only exception would be during an exam period or when we or the kids thought there was something essential.”

There are a lot of reasons Catherine chooses to do this, cost being one of them. Depending on flight times and destination, Catherine says she can save up to £2,000 a time by doing things her way, including trips to Egypt, Mexico and Lanzarote, ideally from Heathrow.

Another reason: “There is nothing that you can’t catch up on at school if you have to, while at the same time missing out on an opportunity to see another country, experience another culture, eat differently, speak another language.”

She added: “You have limited time for that as a family.”

Some parents argue that Catherine should have less vacation time during her allotted school time, which Catherine accepts and respects that parents have different ideas about what is best for their children.

She said: “I think this narrative from the media about how important it is for kids to be in school isn’t coming from families taking their kids out of school for a few days before the holidays.”

Catherine added that this may have been “born of Covid” and children would be homeschooled during this time. But claims there has been a much higher rate of general absenteeism since children have returned to school.

And it’s not just some parents who think that they should take fewer vacations, their children’s schools aren’t always happy either. But that doesn’t deter her.

She said her children have been to three schools and reactions have ranged from “having to put it on paper to having a formal meeting to be told the school won’t allow unauthorized absences because I believe they have to do that.” by law.

“We’ve also had slightly less formal meetings where it’s said they can’t authorize it but have a nice holiday.”

Arguments have also been made regarding the impact of the school cut on Noah and Sully’s educational development. But Catherine believes that parents are children’s best educators and that children are learning all the time.

She said: “I think if I didn’t take responsibility for her development outside of the classroom and her only means of stimulation and education was at school, I could potentially influence her education, but we are both very proactive with her learning. if that means teaching them the value of money when we eat out, finding out how much the bill was for each one, reading with them, taking them to new places.

“Even sitting with them, doing their homework, playing board games, all those things that I think are as important to them as their experiences in the classroom, and teaching them what we both do for a living, and the world of work and stuff like that. “