Background: My niece is in grade 2 (I think, o grade 1 hehe sorry - basta 7.5 years old), her mom (my wife's younger sis) is a single mom and is working in Singapore. She planned and bought several plane tickets for my niece, my mother and brother-in-law for a visit to Sing at the end of the month since matagal na sila di nagkita and the tickets she got were bought based on the lowest fare possible for 2006 (until the end of the year, at least). They're set to depart around the 28th of this month.

Issue: My MIL and SIL (mother and sister in law) based the flight plan on last year's schedule where the kid's final exams have concluded on the second week of October. But due to the typhoons and other delays this year, my niece's final exam is moved and it'll coincide with their departure date.

Since my SIL is a single mom and OFW, eto lang talaga chance and sched nya to see her daughter (and to bring her daughter out of the country for the first time), so she wanted to ask for an exemption or petition to move the test date.

3 weeks ago, we've talked to the teacher hoping to arrange for an earlier exam date for my niece and she said she can't move it earlier but could possibly move it later date and told us to talk to the school secretary/principal about it.

So we wrote a petition letter on my SIL's behalf stating the situation to the principal and after a week of waiting, the petition was denied saying that school policy doesn't allow moving of the exam date unless it was due to sickness or calamities.

They can't get different flights since the cost is too prohibitive (additional 30K or so, since the previously purchased flights were really, really cheap).

My niece is very depressed right now since she's been so excited to visit her mom in Sing since the start of the year, my SIL is very upset, my MIL doesn't want to aggrevate the school baka daw paginitan ng mga teachers yung bata...

What can they do?