To not pay school attendance fine?

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And what happens if I don’t. There is no statutory right to appeal.

i submitted an ‘exceptional leave request’ first week of September, requesting 5 days leave for my 6YO and 8YO daughters. We are in India this week participating in Diwali and the religious functions that lead up to it. It’s not the same in our area the U.K. and we wanted the kids to fully experience their cultural traditions at an age where they wouldn’t miss too much at school, with family and friends that live in India.

the head was meant to respond to let us know whether or not the absence would be authorised and give reasons. We didn’t hear anything and then chased up a few weeks before half term, but no response.

today we got the standard ‘why have your kids not in school email’, which I responded to and finally got confirmation that the absence has not been agreed and so will be unauthorised. No reason given other than they see it as a family holiday.

in our area it’s an automatic fine by the LA if we take kids out for 5 days. I’m a bit annoyed at the lack of communication from the school. We can’t control that Diwali is in term time, it’s only 5 days and this is really important to us as a family.

what would happen if I don’t pay the fines (it’s more the principle that I don’t think we should have to).

in terms of missing education - kids attendance is 100% otherwise and both are greater depth so I do think this week in India is a better experience for them than any impact of missing 5 days of primary school.

The other issue is you’ve agreed to the terms and conditions implied by the school. You’ve got no ground.

That’s not actually true. Education is legally mandated. Not school…you can educate how you see fit legally. Hence why it’s legal to home educate

I have a feeling the schools have zero discretion anymore. I know it used to be the case that holidays were okayed if they had cultural significance, but I think it’s out of the schools hands now.

Sorry my above reply was to @Vistada whi said school was mandatory

Sounds like a lovely holiday to take on top of half term.

Not an authorised one and certainly not a religious observance, as it wasn't even during Diwali, but sounds very nice.

Doesn't mean you'll get away without the automatic fine for taking a lovely holiday tagged onto half term and just before a religious celebration, though.

The Easter Monday bank holiday is a substitute for the Easter Sunday, in the same way that if Christmas falls on a Sunday, you'd have a bank holiday on Monday.

Could you not have waited until next year, when it’s likely to fall in half-term?

I work in a school and I can assure you that schools arnt interested on where you are going and why, if you don't have an appointment letter from a hospital or a speech therapist or something along those lines it will always be unauthorised.
If youu don't pay the fine, the fine will increase. If you don't pay that it does go further to courts where you can be fined £3000 or jail. The worst case scenario is they will contact social services. Most of this isn't the school either but your local council.

You do know authorisation, or not, of absence is nothing to do with teachers? Teachers are not involved at all. It is to do with the government, who made the decision about not authorising most absences and instituting fines.

Schools have a very narrow range of occasions when absence can be authorised. They are expected to follow the policy to the dot and are answerable to the local authority and OFSTED about it. Attendance for each child is collected weekly and scrutinised, including type of absence marks used in electronic registers. Schools are questioned and held to account over them. Figures are scrutinised and investigated by OFSTED and given to the DFE and included in Performance Tables.

It's another one of those policies that needs revisiting because of its lack of effectiveness. In Secondary Schools persistent absence rates and unauthorised absence rates have, on the whole, risen quite dramatically over the last 4 years.

That does make the fines harder to take then - I think most people actually save money by going abroad out of school holidays, even when the fines are factored in.

It would annoy me too, especially given your children's ages, but I'm not sure you have a much of an alternative unfortunately.

The rules are not about you OP. They have to have a standard for everyone. If they authorise your holiday they have to authorise everyone who presents with the same reason.

Staying in this country does not stop you from celebrating your religious festival. Diwali is most certainly recognised and celebrated in the schools local to us. There are fireworks and lots of local families get together. Maybe you could set up
a local event for other local families to celebrate together.

If you wish to take your family away to celebrate though, you have to pay the fine.

Annoying as it is, you need to pay or end up with a bigger fine or in court. I think you did the right thing to take them btw, but there just isn’t any common sense in the absence fine system.

I think thats its fine to pay the fine. You are in a christian country, following its values and culture. You break the school rules then you pay the fine.

Religion is a protected characteristic.

One would hope the school would back down when reminded of that.

Make sure you do all the procedural appeals etc correctly. Protect yourself. Don’t just ignore.

Get professional help.

I'm sorry this has happened to you. Good luck.

But they haven’t gone for Diwali. They’ve just taken an extra week after half term for a longer holiday. They’re not going to be there over Diwali, and they could celebrate here without missing school.

They just wanted a longer holiday. And that’s fine, people do it all the time. They just have to pay the fine.

@sunsetsurfer this stupid teacher encourages the little blighters to nag their parents to take them away in term time. I get smaller class sizes and a bonus in fines that month - it’s brilliant because I then use the fines to pay for a 6 week cruise in summer. Why don’t you come join my profession for all the extra cash and extra holidays! Alternatively you could make my job easier by showing some sodding respect to the person that’s teaching your little darlings to read, write and count!

Feeling better now? I hope that in the few minutes you allow your daughter to get an education she takes full advantage of it , especially when the stupid teachers are trying to teach her to write coherently.

I'm a bit confused about the timelines if I'm honest. OP says that the 5 days starts on Friday 10 November, but it sounds like the are there already and also said that they were tacking the time on to half term. Are there any UK schools which have half terms in November? I thought they were all in the third or fourth week of October. Even if it's half term this week, I can't quite get my head around how next week will be accounted for before the 5 days starts on Friday.

Also, the OP said that they were leaving on Monday, so that wouldn't add up to 5 days out of school in any case, even if they arrived back in the UK on the Tuesday.

Something seems to be muddled here!

We came last weekend. Half term ended today (inset day today). 5 day’s request from tomorrow to next Monday. We leave next Monday morning and arrive in U.K. Monday lunchtime (save time flying east to west) Back to school on Tuesday. Nothing muddled.

So if it hadn’t been Diwali later this week do you really think we’d be in India right now, in term time? We definitely wouldn’t!

I’d write to the board of governors and ask for an exemption on the grounds

a) you requested the absence and received no response
b) it’s to celebrate a religious festival with relations

Be polite and ask for the fine to be waived on this occasion. I think the BoG will side with you.

Thanks for clarifying. That makes more sense but it was muddled originally because you said earlier that the 5 days started on Friday 10th. Whereas they actually start on Tuesday 7th.

Anyway, as I said above, I think your kids will benefit far more from a week celebrating Diwali with their extended family in India, and I think it's shit that schools can no longer authorise this kind of trip, but that's the way things are now so I think you will have to suck up the fine. People can and do get prosecuted for not paying, so it isn't worth the risk imo. Just put it down as an additional cost for the trip.

I actually have no idea where that stupid elephant came from?!

And I can't seem to edit it out either!!

If you looked up the term dates for one of the UK's Hindu schools, you'd see that this is a normal attendance week and they have Diwali and Puja days next Monday and Tuesday - and the last day of school in July is three days later to accommodate those and Krishna Jamastani (on top of the days off where Christian festivals fall within school holiday periods in the UK). So even they wouldn't be authorising an extra five days for an extended holiday. DfE instructions also don't allow for that many - schools simply aren't allowed to authorise so long, especially not in the context of it being a holiday, rather than a day exclusively set apart for religious observance by the religious body which the parent belongs.

I agree with this OP.

We were turned down for 3 days in term time for a religious festival in my home country. We did go anyway (the school's email arrived when we were away so we wouldn't have known on time anyway, like you).

We were told we could celebrate here. I told them of course we couldn't, it's the family and the culture too. Especially as this would have been the first time in 3 years for DC because of the pandemic, and for other family members who were travelling for it, and whom we hadn't seen since then.

We weren't fined as those were the only absences, but I did dispute this with the school as I totally disagree. They agreed off the record that they'd have authorised it if it was up to them, but the LA has their hands tied.

So I told them that, sadly, I had the feeling DC would be ill for 2 days this year, would that be better? 😆