Aren’t school holidays for holidays?

Is it just me or are you, my reader, also slightly incensed that so many schoolchildren are stranded in Sharm el-Sheik?

Obviously I am concerned about their safety but I’d like to pose a question – what were they doing on holiday when schools had already re-started after the half-term break?

Our newspapers and TV news broadcasts were red hot in the middle of last week with reports that flights back to the UK were suspended following the downing of a Russian holiday jet over the Sinai Peninsula.

Since then we have seen and read about many, many Brits lambasting just about everyone from the UK Ambassador to Egypt to the travel companies for the situation while clutching assorted school-age children.

But shouldn’t they have flown back over the weekend of October 31/ November 1 so that little Chardonnay or Quentin could return to school? A simple question, asked without malice but with a definite slice of frustration.

The cost of breaks in school holiday time has been a bugbear for years and parents have always been quick to take children out of school for a cheaper holiday. Even a fine of, say £100, imposed by the school is small potatoes compared with the savings to be made on the cost of the holiday.

Or, as some would put it, the educational visit. Just how much of an education they get from a purpose-built resort on the beach is not clear.

Mind you, those parents who are not too bothered about children missing school and who are more concerned about saving a few bob might fancy an all-inclusive week, departing this weekend, for £373 – a 49% discount says Thomas Cook.

But anyone tempted by such last-minute deals could find themselves touching down at an airport that thousands of British passengers are trying to leave.

SWMBO is a teacher so we have had almost 40 years of paying top dollar for our holidays. We’ve never complained – we’ve just got on with it, knowing that that’s the way the cookie crumbles when you chose a career in education.

I wonder how parents would react if Chardonnay or Quentin came home from school on the first day of the new term/ half-term and said they’d had a lovely day playing and reading unsupervised as their teacher was still sunning herself/ himself on a Mediterranean beach?