School holiday rules prevent pupils from taking dance exams

School holiday rules prevent pupils from taking dance exams

Rules that stop families going on holiday during term-time are stopping some children from taking external exams for dance, drama and music.

As reported by the BBC, The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) states that schools “too often” refuse permissions to attend its exams, even if pupils will only be away from lessons for a couple of hours.

However, ministers have said that they support pupils taking arts exams during school hours.

The RAD believes that this is causing confusion and that guidance should be made clearer.

According to RAD exams director Andrew McBirnie, before 2013 ballet exams could be run "during the school day and the student was able to leave a class at say 10 o'clock, do their exam and be back by lunchtime - and that seemed to be a perfectly legitimate activity that the student might be doing as part of their all-round education.

"Increasingly over the last few years... there have been more and more schools saying: 'No we can't allow this anymore because of this issue with unauthorised absence.'"

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