An island high school has announced it will ban students from taking term-time holidays from September.

Annette Baker, head teacher of Ramsey Grammar School, says poor attendance is a key issue in under-achievement.

And analysis of her school’s year 11 results last year show that once attendance levels fall even below 97%, there is a major impact on exam outcomes.

Mrs Baker said: ’My job is to get the best results for the young people of Ramsey Grammar School, to make sure they have the life choices, access to opportunity, the things they need to enrich their lives.

’I will do whatever possible to achieve that.

’But we are talking about an increasing number of parents who take students out for substantial periods of time to literally go on holiday. I’ve got to get the students in front of the teachers.’

Head teachers can authorise up to 10 days’ holiday in term time on a discretionary basis.

Mrs Baker said she was using her discretion not to authorise.

The move was announced in a letter to parents before Christmas.

Mrs Baker said there had only been one complaint from a parent seeking clarification and most understood the rationale for it.

This year will be a transition and parents who have already made holiday plans are being asked to let the school know and come in and talk about them.

But the ban on taking term-time holidays will come in from September when it will only be authorised in exceptional circumstances.

Taking time out for family commitments such as weddings will not be affected by the ban.

Mrs Baker said the link between attendance and exam outcomes was not just anecdotal but the school had done statistical analysis to support its case.

This showed that 80.6% of last year’s year 11s who had attendance of between 97-100% achieved five A* to C grades at GCSE including English and Maths.

Where attendance was 91-93.9%, only 33.3% got that range of grades. And the figure fell to 16% when attendance was less than 91%.

Mrs Baker said: ’There are a lot of reasons for non-attendance, not least medical. If people are ill, they are ill, you can’t do much about that.

’I’m trying to control things you can control. Attendance is not just a marginal gain.’

For the month of December, there was authorised absence in the region of 7.5%.

Not all of this was for holidays - some was for school-based activities and some was for family commitments which the school is not clamping down on.

Mrs Baker accepted the arguments about the educational value of going abroad.

She said: ’I’m not saying those kinds of trips are not valid.

’But getting the best results is job number one. We are constantly reviewing attendance and improving performance.’

Parents who persist in taking their children out, without authority, will be reported.

Mrs Baker said she understood why parents chose to take the children out in term-time when fares and holiday prices were cheaper.

She said: ’I absolutely get it. The Steam Packet and the airlines put their prices up during holidays. I think that’s unfair.

’While I sympathise with parents over the arguably ruthless and unscrupulous hiking of prices which I do think needs to be tackled, that’s not my problem.

’Their ire should be directed at the travel companies, not at the school.’

Ramsey Grammar School, which has more than 850 students on its roll, scooped the Workplace Well-being awarded at the 2018 Isle of Man Newspapers’ Awards for Excellence.