When I was twelve I missed three weeks of school when I collapsed with appendicitis while watching Pirates of Penzance in the school hall and was whipped off to hospital and under the knife.

My school reports indicate very clearly the considerable and harmful effect it had on my grades in all subjects.

This was back in the days when we were given class positions and I dropped more than ten places in some subjects.

Accordingly I have no sympathy for parents who think that it is acceptable to remove children from school in order to save money on a package holiday that (however much they try to protest otherwise) has a zero to negligible educational benefit to the student and will leave them disadvantaged on their return.

Having served as a school governor at several schools, I am all too aware of the teacher workload that is added in helping an absentee to catch up and fill in the gaps, such is the pace of learning in our schools now.

Imagine the chaos if every child in a class had parents who wanted to go to Florida during term time and acted like the business man in the Isle of Wight who would rather pay thousands in legal fees than the holiday firms’ inflated school holiday charges.

The state system is not designed to offer the one to one service that could cope with such blinkered and frankly arrogant behaviour.

The father in question now has a website encouraging tactical voting based on this subject alone to avoid paying a £60 fine for an unauthorised holiday.

Dressing it up as parental choice versus nanny state is disingenuous in the extreme.

Clearly there are exceptions and head teachers have the discretion to allow absence for (say) funerals and other special family occasions and would only very rarely fail to accommodate compelling reasons.

This is not a case of the state usurping the rights of parents; it is in fact the state, on our behalf, protecting the rights of all children to the best possible education.

Not to challenge the selfishness of some parents would be grossly unfair to the majority who rightly put their children’s welfare and education above their desire to head for the sun when others can’t.

School attendance is already an ongoing challenge with some parents pandering to their little darlings who haven’t done their homework by supplying a false sick note.