Sam Leith: Let heads lay down holiday rules for school

City banker James Haymore is mounting a legal challenge to the Government’s crackdown on parents taking children on holiday during term-time. Fined £120 for taking his children out of school to fly to a family memorial service, he refuses to pay. He will argue in court that the prosecution breaches his children’s right to family life.

At issue is Michael Gove’s abolishing of a rule that allowed headteachers to exercise their own judgment in allowing up to 10 days of term-time absence “in special circumstances”. Campaigners against his decision are calling this “the test case we have been waiting for”.

As this case reminds us, there are two Michael Goves. There is Gove The Great Devolver — adherent to the good Tory principle that decisions are best made at local level to suit local circumstances. Then there is Gove The Great Centraliser, who — not trusting teachers to make the right decisions locally — wants King James Bibles delivered to school libraries in pantechnicons, “British values” to ring through the curriculum, and headteachers to have minimal discretion in term-time absence or the teaching of Steinbeck.

It’s the latter Gove who is at work here. You can see his reasoning: it’s not about pettily thwarting parents’ “right” to save money at Thomas Cook. No child is an island, entire unto itself: unpredictable term-time absences disrupt the teaching of all and waste scarce resources catching up missed work. Fatuous to pretend otherwise.

If you want schooling to run to your schedule, by all means home-school your kids. If you want someone else to do it for you, and at public expense, you can damn well respect their schedule. What’s more, your term-time break can screw up the Ofsted report on which the school’s prosperity depends: that may be unfair, but it’s how things are.

On the other hand the enforcement regime — a £60 fine per child — is certainly unfair: well-off parents will regard it as no more than the cost of doing business; poorer parents won’t have that luxury. That Mr Haymore is going to court, when he could have just signed a cheque, shows principle. He’ll be painted as a rich man wanting his own way, but he could have had that for £120. Actually, he’s contesting a position to the benefit of those who can’t just wave off the fines. I admire him. I also hope he loses.

Let’s not have a precedent in human rights law — with its potential for vexatious future litigation — muddying the issue of truancy. Rather, let’s have the DofE step down voluntarily, and the Great Devolver make a guest-appearance to return discretion for “special circumstances” to headteachers. Then let’s see those headteachers use that discretion, on a case-by-case basis, to say: “No.”

With ears still bleeding freely in Somerset and neighbouring counties following Metallica’s appearance at Glastonbury, the hairy American rockists are enjoying a moment in the sunshine. The controversy over their appearance — hippies were angry that Metallica’s singer James Hetfield appears to condone the hunting of bears with guns — is all but forgotten.

Nevertheless, it’s warming to hear that Dolly Parton’s performance the following day drew a bigger crowd.

Tell you what: I bet Dolly, brought up in the Appalachians, would be more use on a bear hunt than all the members of Metallica put together. What’s more, she would be in no danger of being mistaken for a bear herself.