As a father of three children the short answer, from my point of view, is a resounding YES.

Alex is now 15, Natasha 13 and Max 10.  All have been taken out of school, though the last time we did it was a few years ago, and we probably won't do it again as they are studying for various exams. But when they were younger my wife and I concluded they would miss very little and gain an awful lot.  We used to do it in either the last few days of the Christmas term so we could squeeze in a bit of early season skiing or the first week of the January term so we could save some money.

If they had different half terms in February then we definitely did, otherwise we wouldn't get any skiing in except for the beginning and end of season. We are a skiing family.

At no point did we feel it harmed their education.  Quite the opposite, as they went into ski school and met children of other nationalities and made new friends from different backgrounds and parts of the country.  We are sticklers for self-sufficiency out in the mountains so simply learning to look after all the gear and get to the correct place on time to meet us, or their ski instructor, is time well spent.  Then there is the appreciation of nature, the environmental issues and the history of the mountains and alpine areas.

Alex thought it quite cool to drive along a road that Hannibal had apparently been along with his elephants and skinning up to the St Bernard monastery one January when he was 13 years old was an unforgettable experience. Better than any school trip.

Of course we could have done all these in school holidays, but not for the same price and they wouldn't have spent so much time skiing and so would be less good skiers. Skiing has given them so much.

One of our happiest days in the mountains was a couple of years ago just before Christmas.  I was with Alex, Natasha, a couple of other ski instructors with their partners and a few other adult friends.  The kids, who were 13 and 11, could more than hold their own on the slopes and were better than a couple of the other adults and during a long lunch in the sun, well, we all just chatted away like a bunch of good mates.

To be better at something than an adult at that age I reckon did wonders for their self-confidence and to be treated as an equal rather than a child then ditto.

I remember when I got back there was a letter waiting for me form the Educational Welfare Office threatening all sorts of things as the children had been taken out of school. They had missed 3 days I seem to recall and on that trip they went to the Verbier Language School for an hour every day after skiing to learn French and we tried to speak it at every opportunity. They even had homework and vocabulary to learn!

I guess it depends on whether you think skiing and spending time in the mountains is just "a holiday" or something more significant.

I know where I stand in the debate.

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