It takes the piss, they not doing it round here, least not at our local school. But what really does take the piss is, after every school holiday, half term etc, our local school always start back a day late, due to staff training days. Now, if we wanted to take the kids out of school for a day, we'd need a good reason, and even then its frowned upon, so why can they keep them off for an extra day. They get enough holiday as it is, so why cant they do whatever training they need in that time?