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Holy shit, death to the UK
(hexbear.net)
This is nationwide, apparently. This is just the infographic that the Nottingham council put out
This absolutely boggles my American brain that you'd have to ask permission to take your kid out of school. When I was a child my parents would call the school and let them know when I would be away for vacation as a courtesy to the administration, telling not asking.
In America there’s a concerted effort to destroy public education. That means there are insane policies like this one: Some public schools lose a bit of funding each time a student doesn’t show up. Doesn’t matter that the school’s expenses stayed the same. It’s not like they could tell a teacher to go home 15 minutes early and reduce their pay accordingly, which would be awful for the teachers anyway. So schools are extremely motivated to keep kids in the school.
In some places in America they still count if they were 'unexcused' (ie no doctors note, even if your kid was sick) and parents taken to truancy court. I remember some friends growing up that had to fight that because they didn't have the money to see the doctor over every sick day.