A lot of people are missing the full implications of this. The case in question involved a holiday, yes and that's what's being used to obscure the issue of the judgement. The judgement was about authorised and unauthorised absences. This means if somebody at school decides they know better than you and that you child is not ill (authorised absence) they will then rule it as unauthorised. Do not be so naïve as to say it won't happen. It will, it already has. I remember a post on here from a furious parent of a child with health problems who had an issue with the school deciding they knew better than the childs medical team and were ruling absences as unauthorised (it may still be around if anyone cares to search.
There is also the more recent one where a child with multiple health issues who can only manage partial attendance is being told they will not be allowed home when they get too ill and the nurse is being told to go against medical advice and even when she medically thinks it necessary for the child to be at home to not allow it.
There will be more cases as there have in the past where unauthorised absence now means any absence. Funerals will be increasingly refused (there is an already small but increasing number of schools who have done this)
Many schools now insist on production of a fit note from a Dr as the deem appointment letters no longer sufficient. Drs don't usually do this for children and some charge for this additional service.
Now down to why this is being done by schools. As previous posters have said the school gets judged and penalised for all absences authorised or unauthorised. They can do nothing about the authorised absences so they are forced to turn all absences into unauthorised criminal and finable offences to appear as if they are doing something to address the problem.
Before anyone says but surely...No there is no flexibility and no common sense. EWO always repeats the mantra that children should be in school and their education is important so they don't fall behind. I fail to see how that is relevant to a child with a terminal condition whose parents are being hounded for them to attend school (yes it has happened with both terminal and serious but by a stroke of luck went into remission cases). Admittedly some still have a degree of autonomy but they are becoming few and far between and all end up towing the party line when it comes to a child with serious health issues who ends up having a great deal of time off. Not much is done to try to provide the child with a means to access some school work when they feel up to it. Instead, most of the energy is put into harassing the parent and threatening them with fines.
Some schools already are saying if your child is ill (even under a consultant with a serious issue) to send them in anyway and the school (who often times will not even have a school nurse or anyone medically trained) will decide if they are fit enough to attend. The result will be more children sitting in offices needing medical attention and not getting it. Cases have already occurred, you can find some of them here and this is just a small sample of the population.
People will scoff at the idea but just do a little research around various parenting and education forums and you will find these cases. I have one anecdote of my own from way back when I still attended school. Our schools head was new and keen to improve its reputation in all areas. It was by no means a failing school and had good results but they decided there was always room for improvement. They adopted a hardline approach to absence similar to the one we see emerging today. I'm sure there were other cases but one I actually witnessed was the case of a girl who had visibly broken a bone in a PE lesson being told by the head that she was lying and just wanted to get out of school. This was after the school nurse had approached the head for permission to ring the girls parents and get her to a hospital to be x-rayed.