Daniel Moore, 31, was expecting a fine for taking his son, Charlie, out of school for a week for vacation. What he wasn't expecting was a penalty notice so riddled with errors, it made him fear for his child's education. To teach the instructors a lesson, Moore sent the fine to the school along with a graded copy of the letter—suffice to say the school did not receive a very good grade on their work.
Moore was well aware that pulling his child out of school would result in a fine of €60 ($68.35), but he was taken aback by the numerous, casual misspellings throughout the document. The misspelled words were not difficult ones, either! "Guilty" was written as "guitly," and notice was written as "notie."
Moore commented to Devon Live:
I saw a couple of spelling errors as soon as I opened the letter but as I read on more mistakes appeared. At first I thought it was quite funny but when you place it into the context that these people are responsible for the future of children's education it is concerning.
After the post went viral, a spokesperson for the county blamed the typos on "a new IT printing system," and insisted the errors "won't be repeated."
Moore hopes that is true:
I've said that I'll pay the £60 fine but I just wanted to make sure people could see how sloppy the letter was. Since putting it on Facebook it's had an amazing amount of reaction, I think there's a lot of support out there for parents in my position.
Moore ended up giving the letter a D- (oof) with the message "Must try harder." On Facebook, he wrote:
Today we received our fines for taking Charlie on holiday.
I'm not going to pretend I'm a Spelling guru or a typing expert.
But I'm also not the Head of Education in Devon.
This woman's in charge of the future generations education, our children's education and she's rubber stamping this tripe!
I'm going to pay the fine, no questions asked but I shall also be sending her letter back marked & graded.
Maybe I'll throw a little holiday snap in as well!
Hopefully, next time, Devon County's Head of Education and Learning will take the time to check her work before sending it out.
H/T - Fatherly, BBC
