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Any level of absence can have a serious impact on children’s education, but lengthy absence can be particularly devastating. For that reason, it’s unlikely that a penalty notice will be issued, and the matter may be referred directly to the Court instead.
Schools in Staffordshire are all supported with resources and trained to support you encourage your child into school. Please ensure you speak your child’s school and ask for a meeting to discuss your concerns. There are also resources available to you on our Staffordshire County Council including a series of video clips talking about some of the issues parents face which you may find helpful.
Staffordshire schools have reward and incentive schemes in place to encourage school attendance, Staffordshire County Council are supporting with a unified campaign to all primary schools from September 2024. The tone of the campaign will be supportive and encouraging – with a strong focus on emotional health support. Our attendance campaign focuses on the ‘HERO’ theme to encourage the message:
For pupils that are struggling with their emotional health, we have created a ‘Helpful Heroes’ workbook to understand children’s barriers to avoiding school and to help manage their worries through a book full of mindfulness activities, suitable for their age group. We have created a ‘Helpful Heroes parents’ guide’ to talk you through the different activities and mindfulness activities.
The law entitles every child of compulsory school age to an efficient, full-time education suitable to their age, aptitude, and any special educational need they may have. It is the legal responsibility of every parent to make sure their child receives that education either by attendance at a school or by education otherwise than at a school. Where parents decide to have their child registered at school, they have an additional legal duty to ensure their child attends that school regularly. This means their child must attend every day that the school is open, except in a small number of allowable circumstances such as being too ill to attend or being given permission for an absence in advance from the school.
There was concern that penalty notices (sometimes called fines) were being issued inconsistently across the county with some Council’s issuing multiple penalty notices to a family within a year and some issuing none at all. This created a postcode lottery for families, so the framework has been introduced to ensure more fairness and consistency. There has also been a rise in term-time holidays which are disruptive to a child’s education.
A penalty notice allows parents to discharge an offence by paying a one-off penalty without the matter being referred to court where they could receive fines of hundreds of pounds and a criminal record. Penalty notices can be issued for term time holidays, when excluded pupils are seen in a public place and where children are persistently absent from school. Only two penalty notices will be able to issued to parents for these reasons in a three year period as the third offence will now have to be referred directly to court. This will apply from 19th August, 2024.
The new law will require any unauthorised absence from 19th August 2024 to be dealt with under the new regulations so it would be £80 for each child and each parent. For a family of four with two children, that would amount to £320 if paid within 21 days of receiving the penalty notice. If paid between day 22 and 28, it would be £640.
The law states that the local authority must withdraw the penalty notices and prosecute the parents in court where they could each receive £1000 fine, a parenting order, a criminal record and various costs awarded against them.
The new framework means that for a second offence within a three-year period, the discount of £80 per parent for each child won’t apply. For a family of four with two children, that would amount to £640. A third period of unauthorised absence within a three-year period means that the local authority will be unable to issue another penalty notice and may instead refer the matter directly to Court.
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