Cribsheet 31.03.11

Family running on beach — Should these children be in school? Photograph: Blend Images/Alamy

Should you let your children skip a few days of school so you can book a cheaper holiday? Debate is hotting up over the subject on educationguardian.co.uk today, after statistics from the Department for Education showed that 66,000 children are absent without permission each day – many because they are on holiday.

Joanna Moorhead writes:

I'm a mother of four, and I struggle every year with the extortionate cost of trying to get six of us on holiday – I know how much these things hit the family purse. I also know how important they are.

But she wouldn't take her children out of school, she says.

With cheaper deals, quieter destinations and airports with enough breathing space to manoeuvre a luggage trolley, many parents are tempted to trade the amount of learning their children would do in, say, five days at school.

"It's complete claptrap to think children have to attend every single day," comments GermanicusRex.

"If you are teaching a subject that two week holiday might miss an entire element to a subject, this can be crucial," points out Scamander.

Join the debate and have your say ...

In other news, students bursting with business ideas are about to get a chance to win £15,000 to develop their own start-up.

StartUp Summer is a project run by YouGov, UCL and StartUp Britain, in collaboration with Imperial College London. Students are being given the chance to pitch business ideas, with five selected teams taking part in an eight-week programme with mentoring from entrepreneurs and a £2,000 project budget. The project team judged to show the most progress will win the prize of £15,000 to develop their start-up business.

Stephan Shakespeare, co-founder and CEO of YouGov, said: "I have seen how few opportunities exist for creative self-starters who do not fall into the traditional categories set by your average internship scheme. Within a safe and stimulating environment, students can carve their own path into business."

The project is open only to UCL and Imperial College London students initially, with hopes of expanding the scheme nationwide in future.

More education news from the Guardian

• Bad news for the pursuit of creative endeavours, leaving children who aspire to work in the arts a much poorer sector providing inspiration. More than 200 organisations have lost support after Arts Council England funding cuts of 15% to the arts.

• Law students may find themselves not only required to pay increased tuition fees, but with more work to do into the (ahem) bargain. Law schools are worried that cuts in legal aid will lead to an increased pressure on law students to take on unpaid legal work.

Education news from around the web

• The Telegraph reports on figures published today that show the extent to which schools are 'inflating' their GCSE results by including vocational qualifications in their results tally.

• Again using newly released data on GCSE results, the BBC reports that thousands of teenagers had no chance of getting the new English baccalaureate. At 175 state schools, no one was entered for all five of the subjects counted in the new measure, the BBC reports.