BARRY VAUGHAN, of West Alvington, Kingsbridge, writes: That you should feel adept enough to print a ragged letter from Sarah Pike, Gazette, April 3, reproaching you for giving the ugly criminalisation of a family a front-page cover, after the family had taken their holiday during school term time, is accolade enough to proudly display the extent of the Gazette's current professional expertise with its ­accurate publishing, bringing to the local people what are often quite agonising, complex and controversial issues. Sarah Pike projects no informed knowledge of the educational sector; and she is far from being alone in this country, as verified by the ­complete absence of any glossy magazine that covers school matters from among the ­hundreds on sale. But she and others could well dwell on the following continuing unsavoury deleterious warping of accepted educational philosophy, in lieu of some definition of education. In the matter of protecting children from injurious acts and a surreal derogatory ­troubling of their innocence: in following the ethics of a good, all-round educational upbringing, of which the ­primary responsibility is that of the parents, or of a school through in loco parentis, ­compulsory school attendance law has only been to ensure that exploitative parents who continually deny their child access to educational uplifting are suitably brought to the ­justices to explain their steady neglect. However, for the first time, arbitrary judicial involvement with quite heavy, compounding fines, plus built-in imprisonment – for trivia – are being woven improperly into what should be a place of safety and enlightenment, itself ­rendering going to their industrial sheds and huts, deviously entitled as schools, more a penal ordeal than a joyful place shimmering with built-in educational ­examples encouraging children to learn. While in trust, parents assist society by going to work for the common good. Yet thousands of families nationwide have already suffered fines upon ­taking 'educational' holidays during term time, and this is set to escalate as the jaded local government organisation ­presses for its idiot five-term school year, meaning: a two-week 'break'; four weeks at school, all year round. A few schools are already ­trialling the two-week length of summer holiday. Many more, and everyone visiting popular holiday haunts, really will be slithering over each other like maggots on a carcass, suffering hell holidays and sky-high prices, including off-peak. There are quite a number of reasons why children would be unable to attend school with machine-like regularity – ­illness being the most common. The Plowden Report recommended that, at all times, school classroom teaching plans should be 'fully differential' to all children so as to accommodate a staged repeat of teaching time lost. Children are not factory components stacked up for some timed manufacturing operation, but some interfering, ambitious politicians think they are – to education's dire cost, especially at infant stage. Perhaps the Gazette thinks this matter is just as important in its own right as the other concerns Sarah Pike began to list?