Should parents take their children on holiday in term time?

I agree, age and in senior school stage of school year should be a deciding factor for the Head and it should be at the Head's discretion.
We took ours out of school twice in their primary years. Not for financial reasons but for UK holidays because H worked shifts and his shift pattern meant that he only got 2 lots of 7 days off in a year and one 14 day period and could not submit holiday requests, so if we wanted a family holiday which as H worked damn hard for and deserved we had to take it whenever those 7 days fell which could be any month of the year.
Nobody seems to consider shift workers in all this.

Apparently it is a real problem for a child to miss a week's schooling because of going on a family holiday, but perfectly acceptable for a school to refuse to take a child for several weeks because it was unable to cope with a leg in a cast, as happened to youngest DGS.

Meant to say - here in France the holidays are staggered - three groups - early, on time and late. The areas for the holidays were redefined last year but several departments in an area are off at the same time. This does help the situation a bit. Part from Easter bank holiday itself only a third of schools will actually be on holiday that week - some will have gone back to school having had the holiday and others have it a couple of weeks later. The calendar our post lady gives us has all the holiday dates shown and colour coded by areas.

What annoyed me was when the parents would ask for work to take with them! Most times the child would come back never having picked up a pencil. Then I changed tactic. and suggested the child made a scrap book and put in it postcards, tickets for rides as well as little diary bits and maybe photos. Very few children ever did this but those who did, came back with a lovely memento of their holiday.
Even for young children I found it was disruptive to the learning not only of the child but the others in their group and if you had a good number going one after the other it was a pain in the ar*e !
To have the last couple of days of the term off was the best time to go. - the worst was the first few days in September as they missed the new groupings and classrooms etc.

I have no problem whatsoever with children being taken out of school in term time, occasionally, if it is to have important quality time with the family (and it doesn't have to mean going away on holiday).

Yes aggie but the mark up during school holidays is astronomical in some cases. I think there are times when children should not be taken out of school e.g. prior to exams. I agree with others the Head teacher should gave some discretion over this. There are problems then when families have children at different schools. Parents who flout the law are not setting a good example to their children. A law cannot be ignored just because you don't agree with it.

I missed the introduction to algebra due to an operation and only caught up thanks to my brother in law. On the other hand I had also missed several chemistry lessons and I never caught up. I taught Home Economics and it was infuriating to have children miss a lesson where we planned a practical which meant that the following week, when I was teaching a practical lesson I also had to set work for those who weren't cooking and they were invariably disruptive to the rest of the class.

When I was a teacher, I used to get frustrated when parents took their children out of school for holidays, as it impacted not only on their own learning, but that of others. I would have to spend time on individual tuition when they returned, trying to help them catch up, meaning that other pupils who would have benefited from my support did not receive it. The pace in schools is so fast nowadays, that there is no time to do what we are expected to do, without added work.
On the other hand, if I knew in advance and it was in special circumstances, I saw no problem in the head teacher using discretion. We had families who would just take off to Spain for a fortnight and not inform the school. They never thought of the consequences of their actions.

I missed school due to hospital admission when we were doing tables( in the dark ages ) and never managed to catch up , so I can see how taking children on holiday can harm their education . Holiday Companies charge less at quiet times to fill beds

Depends when in the term and the age/stage of the child and their class group. Yes, give the Head some leeway. I think a blanket ban is OTT in this situation, a common sense approach much more helpful.

I feel like you do suzied i.e. It is a bind when children miss school, especially in linear subjects such as maths, when they might have missed out on activities which are introducing a new concept.

But a week, at the HT's discretion should be manageable. It's these bullish patents though who see it just as their right that rub me up the wrong way.