Dear Editor,

On BBC Ones’s, The One Show, (November 16), it was reported that a mother from Herefordshire (Jackie Turner, 50) was going to court, perhaps jail, for taking her daughter backpacking across eight European countries: a once in a lifetime trip; truly educational, inspirational and bonding, she claimed. Could it be learnt in school? Could a child go backpacking around Europe today?

To help her fight her case, troubleshooter Dominic Littlewood, introduced her to a father who’d fought a similar case and won. He advised that, according to the legislation: ‘persistent absence is currently any pupil that has 85% attendance or less in the school year’.

Despite the child having over 90% attendance in the year, the mother was fined a total of £690, (was she given bad advice?), with the father – not on the trip – fined the same.

An hour later on ITV’s Countrywise, they reported on a group of ‘city children’ from Swansea, spending a week on a working farm, (Farming for City Children, Lower Treginnis), on the West coast of Wales. With some not knowing where milk came from, or how to use a knife and fork, (they ‘survived’ on the likes of ‘finger licking chicken’), they had to leave Smart phones etc., at home.

Come the end of the week, not only had they not missed their phones, they’d been early to bed; had lung-full’s of clean air; could milk goats; grow vegetables and make a meal from what they’d ‘harvested’. In short, an experience of a lifetime well worth repeating and which broadened their horizons far more than any computer could.

When it can be said that, radicalisation is born out of a failed education system, clearly a mother needs support to appeal, and the Education Secretary needs to go back to the ‘drawing board’!

Allan Ramsay

Radcliffe