A mother-of-three has resorted to homeschooling her children for three months to avoid the threat of court action for taking them on holiday during term time. Rachel Smith, 43, a jewellery designer, and her husband Stuart, 41, who manages Airbnb properties, had already been fined £480 in January for taking their children - Owen, nine, Ruby, seven, and Zac, five - to Portugal during the school term. The couple, from Bridgewater, Somerset, had booked two more family breaks, including a trip to Legoland and an Easter holiday to Lanzarote , which would require their children to miss four days of school.
To avoid further fines or a potential criminal record, they deregistered their children from school and are teaching them at home until May, when they plan to re-enroll them. Rachel explained: "We're homeschooling our three children for a few months just so that we can go on a couple of affordable holidays. We'd be missing a total of four days off school this term.
We had no choice but to take them out and homeschool them. "We'd already been fined £480 and we were worried about getting a large fine and possible criminal record if we didn't." Rachel criticises the government, calling it "a dictatorship" for imposing such strict rules on families.
Rachel Smith expressed her deep-seated concerns about facing court action due to her decision to take her children on a family holiday during term time: "I was really worried about court action, because I know of lots of people this has .