问答题 Read carefully the following excerpt on term-time holiday arguments in the UK, and then write your response in NO LESS THAN 200 words, in which you should:
Summarize the main message of the excerpt, and then
Comment on whether parents should take children out of school for holiday
during tern time in order to save money.
You should support yourself with information from the excerpt.
Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.
Term-time holidays will be banned

Parents are to be banned by Michael Gove, UK"s Education Secretary, from taking their children out of school to save money on holidays.
He is to abolish the right of head teachers to "authorize absence" from the classroom, which has been used to let families take term-time breaks, and will warn them they face fines for their children not being at school.
"Any time out of school has the potential to damage a child"s education," a senior source at the Department for Education said this weekend. "That is why the government will end the distinction between authorized and unauthorized absence."
"This is part of the government"s wider commitment to bring down truancy levels in our schools. There will also be stricter penalties for parents and schools."
The tough measures on truancy are part of a wider attempt by Mr. Gove to make education more academically rigorous and to tackle a culture in the educational establishment which he believes has accepted "excuses for failure".
Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the measure would discourage parents from trying to put pressure on heads to sanction term time holidays. "The high cost of holidays outside of term time is still an issue but ultimately a child"s education is more important than a holiday," he said.
【正确答案】
【答案解析】
Term-time holidays should be banned

It is a popular trend that children take term-time holidays with their parents. This is believed to be harmful by the UK education department and therefore proposed to be prohibited. In my opinion, such term-time holidays should not be permitted.
Those holidays are obviously interrupting children"s education during the term time. When children are absent from classes for long, they can not keep up with the planned scheme of teaching. Even some of them would ask for make-up lessons, which are definitely not the same as the normal classes went, not to mention those students" parents who take them out of school to save money for the holidays. In this way, such holidays surely damage the progress of their education.
In addition, the cancellation of such holidays can stop parents and students from using this break from education as the excuse for their study failure. Some students tend to use being away from classroom education as their main reason for failure in a test. If such holidays are not allowed, those groups of students would either work hard on their failed subjects or turn to other excuses. At least, they can not contribute their failure to this kind of holidays.
Furthermore, the ban on term-time holidays is likely to help students attend school regularly. Without any good reasons for a leave, students have to attend school daily. In a long term, they would get used to going to school on week days. If without banning such holidays, students are caused to believe that they can ask for a leave whenever they want, which is apparently not good for their attendance and study habits.
To conclude, term-time holidays have an obviously harmful effect on children"s education. The ban on these holidays can help students keep a steady progress of their education and form a good habit. Therefore, this ban should be proposed. [解析] 这是2016年的专业四级考试真题题目。所给材料讲述了近来家长代孩子在学期中请假旅游的事情，英国教育官方提出这一请假制度应该被废除和禁止，他们认为教育比度假更重要，这一请假制度会损害孩子所受教育。这一制度的废除可以减少孩子逃学的现象，也可以减免将度假作为失败的借口的机会。因此，我们考生在综述这一话题时，不能漏掉官方废除这一制度的主要原因，在进行论证过程中也要对这些主要原因进行展开叙述。