AIBU to think laws that fine and jail parents for school absence, outside term time holidays, are ridiculous?

Schools are an amazing safe place, and a lifeline for so many children. Many posters simply won’t understand the sanctuary it can be, and that some schools are brushing children’s hair, washing uniform, supplying coat after coat (when they keep mysteriously disappearing), and providing two regular meals to a child, and food provision for the family. Arguably these children should not be with their parents, but the state provision is not better for most, so school and support workers are the only thing keeping them going. It is these children who must attend, and who are least likely to attend. These same parents are unlikely to be fined as a fine would lead to criminality to repay.

TT holidays are a bit of a different kettle of fish. I’ve never done it as I don’t want my children thinking that money is the lost important thing; they miss out of the end of year parties, induction for the new year, etc. One of mine is a school refuser through anxiety so it would be the worse thing to suddenly have school as optional - which is a pity as this one goes on holiday two weeks after his siblings due to attending in a different area and school system - I would love to go somewhere amazing when the others break up, instead of camping in peak season…

I have noticed at my children’s one form primary school in an affluent area, that it is the children with poor attendance, who struggle academically, and live in social housing, who go on regular TT holidays. Any of these factors could be the reason, but I’m guessing it’s the ££ - they simply wouldn’t be able to afford a weeks holiday abroad if they waited for the holiday. The academic struggles are probably a massive factor for the poor attendance, and the fact that the current school system is designed to support only a very tiny sector.

I don’t think it’s a good system at the moment, but there really are people who will keep their kids off school for any tiny reason, and will repeatedly do so. I think if the tax payers are paying for the education so that people are getting free education, then there should be something to stop it from being abused and wasted - same with NHS appointments.

Those families that don’t care and make a mockery of attending.

I don’t agree with you. We have families where we bend over backwards to help their children achieve, we read with them daily because parents don’t read at home, encourage them, make sure they have the correct equipment as parents aren’t providing it and then lo and behold they are kept off at the drop of a hat. All that hard work and then we need to help them catch up. Reasons being they feel really ill (funny how they come back the next day absolutely fine), it’s their birthday, they want a day off, parents overslept etc. It’s demoralising and so sad for the children.

I’ve just come on to reiterate what I said on a thread where the issue of parents being sent to prison for their children’s non-attendance was being discussed.

The current sentencing guidelines state.

Triable only summarily
Maximum
Level 3 fine (s.444(1) child fails to regularly attend at school)
Level 4 fine and/or 3 months (s.444(1A) parent knowingly fails to secure regular attendance at school)
Offence range
Conditional discharge - Band C fine (s.444(1))
Band A fine - High level community order (s.444(1A))

Link here. https://sentencingcouncil.org.uk/guidelines/school-non-attendance-revised-2017/?source=7510

Parents would only be sent to prison if they refused to pay fines, in the same way anyone who refuses to pay Court ordered fines..

I’m not sure the current laws are the best way to tackle the problem but I do get annoyed by the exaggeration of people suggesting parents would be sent to prison just for the non-attendance.

Schools, local authorities, doe do not give a damn about the children or their education if they did it wouldn’t be such a shambles. They just have standards & performance targets to meet for funding just like hospitals do. It’s in place to essentially prevent those standards falling. It’s highly unlikely that it will be enforced. I take my child out of school during term time every year for holiday & have never had fine or letter/email.

It suggests nothing of the sort.
And I am not a racist.

It doesn't, it targets parents who would love nothing more than their kids to just go to school and who have tried everything to get them there including, literally, dragging them in kicking and screaming. Which is not easy when they are taller than you. Even if you are not eventually fined it is a constant threat. We were threatened with a criminal record and losing our professional jobs and we consistently engaged with the school and provided medical records. The prospect of being fined was entirely counterproductive as it makes your relationship with the school adversarial.

Why are so many people banging on about time out for holidays when the OP specifically said they wanted to discuss the fines for absences EXCEPT term time holidays. Presumably because those debates have been done to death, and it’s been in the news recently about increasing fines for too much time off sick etc in the school year. I thought that is what they want to discuss!

OP I agree with you. My youngest son in year 8 was down to around 90% attendance due to picking up every stomach bug going. 1 day off when we had our first holiday abroad in 20 years and the plane home got delayed by several hours meaning we got home early hours of the morning and he was too tired to go in that day (we’d expected to be back around 11pm which would have been fine). This last year in year 9 he had just 3 days off the entire year (all sick days) and won a silver attendance award. If we had started getting fines in year 8, it wouldn’t have suddenly made him less sick - we’d have either had to force him into school when unwell making others sick too or be paying fines we couldn’t afford (the holiday was a gift from my parents before anyone says we could afford that).

I appreciate it’s hard for differentiating between genuine sickness and someone who is either being abused or neglected… or the kid is simply truant. But the fines make it a parent vs school situation, when in reality you need them to work together to come up with a plan to get the child in!

There are all sorts of reasons why children do not go to school.
There are all sorts of parents.

Some want their children to work. It might be in the family business.
Some don’t believe girls should learn anything. And that they are not as intelligent and boys. Or don’t want to prove they are.
Some don’t know their children don’t go to school. Their lives are so chaotic they barely register what day it is.
Some do take them on holiday or to meet a prospective husband ( usually a husband) within school times
Some don’t want them to go to school if they have had trouble at home in case they tell someone.

Parents and being responsible or good do not always go hand in hand.
Parents should be held accountable.
The school or authorities need to understand why someone is not at school.
How parents bring up children matters. Bringing up a child not to respect education is not okay. Bringing a child up who decides they can play truant daily is not okay. The parent raises the child.

I suspect the real issue with attendance is not term time holidays but neglect/chaotic home lives, family attitudes toward education, school avoidance, SEN … the latter two being hugely more commonplace in today’s school environment.

I’ve definitely had conversations with y11 boys who are still turning up despite being extremely disengaged with school, who in years gone by would have stopped attending probably by Feb Y11. They’ve told me they’re still attending ‘because you have to, right, or your mum goes to jail’.
So it works for some.

What a total waste of young lives. Maybe it's time to make school more relevant.

It’s a broad brush that doesn’t actually address any of the reasons for the attendance crisis.

And also helps put up a pretence that the reason children are struggling in school is solely down to feckless parents. Nothing to do with the absolute decimation in funding, poor standards leading to poor staff retention and a constant layer of pressure.

Thing is rich, wealthy parents who can afford none-term time holidays will just pay it and count it as holiday expense. Those of us who can’t, will not be able to risk it and will end up taking our children on expensive holidays to try and give a similar childhood experience to their wealthier peers.
These children have to be together for a long time, all of primary and secondary school, but you don’t see the richer parents kids suffering from lack of learning. Actually they seem to go on and get top grades, simply because their parents can afford things like tutors.
And this doesn’t target the actual truant kids, ones who’s parents are addicts, or parents who can’t be bothered waking up and taking their child to school, or the kids who abscond from school because they find it too boring or difficult. Or the kids who don’t come in because their older brother has taken the last pair of shoes in the house, or the ones who looked after younger siblings last night and now are too tired to get the bus into school.
These kids need social services help, more support, charity, not fines that their parents can’t pay anyway. The kids who aren’t leaving for a holiday but aren’t in school for 1001 other reasons that have social services written all over them. (I’m not including health because anyone who’s sick should be at home end of)

Id look again at your reading comprehension before you cast aspersions! I said the evidence isn’t about term time holidays but low attendance in general! Going on an annual term time holiday is completely different to persistent absenteeism and the latter has more of an impact, alongside lack of pupil and parent engagement! Going on a holiday term time annually doesn’t affect that engagement, but the fines do.

100% I agree with this comment!!! My son was one of them! Part time tables for a year and half, constant suspensions, constantly having to grab him as they was sending him home because they didn’t have the correct send team there and didn’t know how to support him! Maybe I could fine the school for that actually……. As he missed out on 2 years of proper education due to this.

My brother takes his kids out of school all the time for holidays and they have money so don't mind paying the fines at all. They are the families who are taking the piss and probably should be told off in court.
Attendance is more complicated for working class families with kids with school avoidance etc and I think those families need a lot of support that the gov won't provide.

Meanwhile in Scotland they just tell you to have a nice time! My mum was a single parent and she routinely took me out a week or so before end of term so we could go away for a more reasonable sum. We did so much amazing stuff. Cycling across Italy, camping in Yellowstone, so many museums. I got far more out of it than school in the last week of term where everyone had checked out anyway.

DD1 is flexi schooled anyway so is already off on Fridays, but I don’t really have any qualms about her missing a few days near the end of a term. Plus she’s never ill so doesn’t miss school otherwise.

I think people who take the piss are going to do it regardless of fines and also probably aren’t that bothered about their child’s education generally.

We were parents to a child with complex SEN. She was in special provision from age 4; but I came across many other parents of children with complex SEN, who were either refusing to go to mainstream schools; or were subject to illegal part time timetables or permanently excluded by mainstream schools, who didn’t want to cope with them. (I remember one, permanently excluded by October half term of Y7 by the secondary school).

The government didn’t care enough about their education to do anything about it, like a big expansion of SEN funding for mainstream schools or the special/specialist schools system.

It’s neglect and hypocrisy by the government when so many SEN children, who didn’t have parents able to advocate for them, were written off - and still are!

Yeah exactly another way to get more money out of us.

You think your education didn't suffer, and yet you have reached adulthood unable to tell the difference between "the anecdote of my personal individual experience" vs "decades of rigorous, evidenced research". I rather think that it did.

I think a lot of the parents who complain about this live in a middle class bubble where it’s true that term time holidays don’t cause issues for most children’s eduction. They’re a severe annoyance to the teacher, especially when the parents expect them to put extra effort in to catch their child up. But they don’t cause long term harm.

The problem is that not all the parents doing this are nice parents who otherwise support their children’s attendance and academic progress. And we can’t only fine certain sections of society.

Fines are only triggered after 10 missed sessions, so you can take your kids on holiday for 4 days once a year. I think that’s a decent compromise.

Also what @BogRollBOGOF said. LAs are basically in the invidious position of punishing (some) parents for the fact that education and health operate in silos with both trying to push responsibility onto the other.

I think attendance is really important, DD is fine and could probably skip a few weeks but I absolutely would not let her. Theres an abundance of literature on absence and grades. A holiday is not more important than my DD’s education and more crucially her attitude to showing up for stuff, being present and getting on with it. If I start saying well schools not so important we can miss a few weeks, what kind of message would I be sending to her?

For a very small number of children absence indicate neglect and can trigger interventions for children at risk.