The author of the article is Joanna Biszewska, a journalist at Gazeta.pl.
Crete in August is unbearable. The temperature reaches 40 degrees Celsius, making it difficult to plan trips and sightseeing. We vegetated in the shade by the pool for three days. Only around 7 PM did we go out for walks. I imagined that at the end of September, when the temperatures ease, our trip would be more enjoyable. Not only cheaper, but we could also see a lot more.
We planned a day trip to Santorini, but the locals advised against it. They said there were too many tourists, making it impossible to walk through the narrow streets. They suggested coming in early autumn to truly experience the island’s atmosphere. In our case, another date wasn’t an option. My daughter is in seventh grade, my son in fifth, and we try to follow the school calendar. When it’s school time, it’s school time, not vacation.
Getting up early for school, not being late, and taking care of one’s responsibilities
I don’t judge parents who dare to break away from the routine and plan their most attractive trips during the school year. A well-organized family trip combined with sightseeing will undoubtedly open new horizons for the children. It might even teach them more than sitting in a classroom and copying from the board into a notebook. Unfortunately, there are still schools where lessons are conducted just for the sake of it: attendance is taken, the topic is noted, and the textbook is opened.
Of course, I am tempted by travel offers during the school year, especially at the end of November. It’s a time when children go to school in the dark and return when it’s already dark. We all desperately need light and warmth.
A trip to a warm country in November would certainly improve our mood, physical condition, and mental health. However, I believe it wouldn’t be fair to the teachers and other children in the class.
In my world, there is a time for pleasure, but there is also a time when you have to mobilize yourself. Get up in the morning for school, not be late, and take care of your responsibilities. I also fear that if my children see that I overlook obligations and diligence, they will think it’s a life norm. But for me, it’s not. There are moments in life when you can’t just say, "I’ve had enough; I don’t feel like it anymore, I’m going on vacation." Parenthood, for example, is one of those moments. You can’t back out, leave a small crying child, and announce that "I’ll catch up when I return."
They ask for notebooks, attend extra sessions, and catch up on what was covered a month ago
My children take school obligations seriously, and I know that even if I proposed a vacation during the school year, they probably wouldn’t want to go. They simply like to stay on top of things and don’t want to fall out of rhythm.
Moreover, as one of my children told me, those who go on vacation in the middle of the school year have a hard time when they return. They ask for notebooks, attend extra sessions to catch up on what was covered a month earlier, and fall out of the class’s social life. Not everyone likes that.
However, taking children on vacation during the school year has been becoming the norm for a few years now. Airfare and hotel prices are lower outside of the peak season, and you can avoid the chaos at airports. Moreover, in October and November, you can avoid the unbearable heat, which has been a burden for families traveling with children during the holiday season for several years.
We combine Easter with the May holidays and go to Bali
At the beginning of July, we went with our daughters for two weeks to Malta. Never again. Halfway through the trip, our younger daughter got heatstroke. She had a 40-degree fever, chills, and couldn’t get out of bed. For five days, I didn’t leave the hotel room with her. We returned exhausted. And we decided that in the summer months, we stay in Poland, and we plan foreign trips outside the summer season. We agreed as a family that next year we will combine Easter with the May holidays and go to Bali. The daughters will miss six days of school
- says Magdalena, a legal advisor from Warsaw.
(Editor’s note: In the 2024/25 school year, the Easter break is from April 17-22, 2025, and the May holidays fall on Thursday and Friday, May 1-2, 2025. If you take the kids out of school for six days between Easter and the May holidays, you can organize a two-week trip).
However, the minister won’t prohibit trips during the school year. You can browse offers
Katarzyna Lubnauer, Deputy Minister of Education, mentioned during the summer holidays that parents treat school as a place where their child can go or not go.
There is compulsory education. In many countries, parents can be stopped at the airport
- Lubnauer said on Radio ZET. She added that the Ministry of Education "is looking into what solutions to adopt so that parents understand that compulsory education means compulsory education".
And although there are currently no legislative efforts to introduce restrictions on children’s vacations during the school year, parents are already unhappy with the mere idea of banning school-year vacations.
On social media, under photos of family vacations in 40-degree heat, they wrote: "We have to do it now because the minister is banning us from going at other times".
What happens at school in September? Not much. Because there are no teachers to teach
Stasiek is in fourth grade, and my daughter is in kindergarten. July and August, the children spend with their grandparents while we work. Two years ago, we found out at a travel agency that a week in Turkey in August, at a decent hotel with pools and slides for children, with all-inclusive, would cost us around 20,000 złoty
- recalls Joanna from Warsaw. The mother of two explains why she and her husband planned a vacation for September this year.
We’re going to Greece for nine days in the second week of September. We plan to enjoy the pools, the beach, and some sightseeing. I don’t think my son will miss anything at school. Nothing happens in September anyway, and the kids have more substitute teachers than regular lessons. I think he’ll learn more from exploring Greece with us than in school. I’ll bring a children’s book about Greek mythology. We’ll read it in the evenings because I know it’s a required reading in the fourth grade.
The end of the holidays doesn’t mean that all schools are ready to implement the lesson plan and core curriculum. In many places, staffing is still being finalized. The biggest shortage is of teachers in STEM subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry. School principals are plugging the gaps with retirees they’ve persuaded to return to teaching and with people without full qualifications. They go through the necessary procedures with the school boards, and with the board’s approval, they arrange for a biologist, after quick courses, to teach geography, and for a computer science teacher to take over physics.
Parents know that in September, there are more substitute lessons than planned ones, and without feeling guilty that their children will miss out, they take them out of school and go on vacation. Because it’s cheaper, the weather is perfect, and there’s no need to push through a wild crowd. Only the kids sometimes complain that they’re missing the most fun time of the school year.
We’re getting used to the new classroom because it changes every year. We agree on who sits where, next to whom, and where their locker is. We check out the new teachers and establish good relationships with them for the whole year. In September, the teachers aren’t pushing us too hard; during lessons, we go out to the school playground. There, we discuss what we’ll be learning, joke around, and mess around a bit
- says a sixth-grader from a private school in the capital. The girl wouldn’t want to go anywhere with her parents in September because she missed her friends and school over the holidays.
There’s no need to provide a reason in the attendance record. A simple, "Please excuse the absence," is enough
School principals turn a blind eye to children’s September vacations. They’re used to the fact that September is a warm-up, that parents extend the holiday season. June is similar. After grades are given out, half the children in the class disappear. They pick up their report cards only in September.
In the electronic attendance record, parents mark the dates when their child is absent from school and write briefly, "Please excuse the absence." There is no obligation to provide a reason why their son or daughter isn’t at school.
A Polish language teacher who works at a primary school in Warsaw (this year she will be a homeroom teacher for a seventh-grade class) says that some parents talk to her about taking their child on vacation for a week or two. They agree that during the trip, the child will look at textbooks and read required readings. They talk to subject teachers and agree on what the child should study during their absence. But there are also those who just excuse the absences on Librus without giving a reason. Everyone at school knows it wasn’t an illness that kept the student at home.
By late November, children return to school after a few or a dozen days off, rested, tanned, handing out souvenirs and treats from their trip. It’s hard to hide the fact that the child spent a week sunbathing in Oman
- says the teacher. And she adds that there are parents who think that the school should adjust to their plans, not the other way around. This attitude is frustrating.
The child is unprepared because of the parent
I gave a student a demerit because he came to class unprepared. The father wrote to me asking to remove the demerit because his son had been in Asia, landed late at Okęcie, and couldn’t find his book at home. The father’s lack of humility genuinely angered me. I don’t take it out on students when I know that while we were discussing ‘Balladyna’ in class, they were eating shrimp and riding jeeps through the desert. But I know some teachers who are less lenient. They can really push those kids who vacation while others study
- the teacher tells me. And she concludes:
It’s not the kids’ fault, it’s their parents. That boy who was in Asia later told me that he didn’t even want to go on that trip, that he preferred to go to school with his friends. But his parents announced: ‘Malaysia. Two weeks. We’re going.’ My student had no say in the matter. So I removed his demerit. Because I know that if his parents hadn’t dragged him through airports for two days, he would have remembered to bring his book.
