WE are told of the serious effect of taking children out of school for family holidays and the effect on their education caused from them being away from school, even for just a few days.

In fact, every few months a story appears of a disgruntled parent who has been fined for having the cheek to book a holiday in term time and taking their children with them meaning their offspring miss a few days of maths, English and the like.

It is an issue because not everyone can have their holidays at the same time as the schools are off. And booking holidays when the schools are off is invariably on the costly side of expensive.

So while you can perhaps understand the schools' complaints you can certainly see where the parents guilty of this 'crime' are coming from.

But this doesn't always appear consistent - and that is sure to annoy many people.

Yet again Wimbledon is here and it is seemingly quite acceptable for hundreds of children to be taken out of school for two weeks to act as ball boys and girls, for what is a professional sporting event worth millions of pounds a year.

If it is not acceptable to remove children from school for a family holiday, why is it acceptable for the schools to nominate them to take part in the professional sporting event?

Also at the State Opening of Parliament later in the year, the Queen will be accompanied by two royal pages, who must have been taken out of school for the day.

Does the Queen realise the serious  disruption to their education.

I hope that she will be fined £50 each, like anybody else would be.

Michael Halpin, via email