Term time holidays and fines

[AlRRRR]

Hello,

so before I begin my question I’m just going to say that I work in education myself and I am a trained social worker. I I understand where the new policy has come from under the new schools bill act, wdh is going through Parliament at the minute on its third reading.

fines have been in place since 2013, and I totally understand why they are in place, I may not necessarily agree.

I understand that attendance is important and if children are missing too much education they are missing chance to have great development.

this year my child’s school has decided to get extra strict about the guidelines , they’ve had a meeting with the local safeguarding educational officer. together they’ve decided to revamp the attendance policy.

This new policy is only for my child school and the other school surrounding it in the same local authority have not adopted these guidelines. The school is not in a impoverished area, there are no major problems, so we are all very confused as to why this has come about.

it now includes the following;
A fine, which is not limited to a term time holiday, you will also get fined if your child has more than five days off a term even if this is due to illness. That is the first scary part.

secondly it has changed from getting a fine when you go away during term time to now being allowed to do this a maximum of three times and then you will face criminal court and a criminal record.

Thirdly attendance is now monitored every half term which means if your child is off more than twice during half term, they become a persistent absentee with referrals made to the educational safeguarding team healthcare teams and meetings in school.

fourthly if the child is late past 910 they will be marked as unauthorised absence for the entire day even though they arrived at 9:15. there is no late mark anymore just unauthorised absence for the entire day.

this is a blanket policy and includes children who are ill and children that have been asked to stay away from school for things like chickenpox.

I think there should be some kind of leniency for example maybe one week holiday a year in term time, holiday companies and the prices go up as much as 2 to 3 times, my child is half Portuguese and sometimes the only time we can see family is by taking one or two days of at the end of the term time. there was a difference of £1500 in total for a flight taken during the holidays versus two days before term ended.

The gap between rich and poor is further widening and parents who simply cannot afford the holiday prices will simply therefore not get to go anywhere? so basically if you are rich you can do whatever you want, you get as many holidays as you want you get private education and none of these threatening criminal records….

what are your thoughts?

I’m currently having absolute hell with my dd school. Threatened with fines or court for ILLNESS (both long term underlying conditions and general illness). I’ve explained they can’t fine or prosecute for illness but they are threatening all the time to the point I’m probably going to de register as it’s making me ill from stress they just want kids sent in ill!

If a school thinks that a parent is falsely claiming their child is sick, the only way to resolve that is evidence. Without evidence, the school is guessing. However, schools should not go over the top with this and evidence does not have to take the form of a doctor's note. I have come across schools that demand a doctor's note even when they have sent the child home due to sickness. That is clearly wrong.

@700wishes it sounds like your school is being unreasonable. Perhaps it is time to look for another school that treats sickness absence more sensibly.

But again - as I said before - how do you define evidence? What possible evidence can a parent bring in, that isn't a note from a doctor, unless it's a condition that photographs?

Off the top of my head, copies of prescriptions and appointment cards are acceptable evidence.

The guidance to schools is:

In the majority of cases a parent’s notification that their child is ill can be accepted without question or concern. Schools should not routinely request that parents provide medical evidence to support illness. Schools are advised not to request medical evidence unnecessarily as it places additional pressure on health professionals, their staff and their appointments system particularly if the illness is one that does not require treatment by a health professional. Only where the school has a genuine and reasonable doubt about the authenticity of the illness should medical evidence be requested to support the absence.

No-one is talking about schools wanting doctors' notes in large volumes. But yes, a parent may sometimes ask you to produce a note so that they don't get fined. That doesn't mean you have to provide a note, of course.

And both of those encourage parents to bring their children for an appt. School age kids with a cold generally don't need to see a dr at all, so there can be no proof.

I don't mean to be difficult. But the world needs to realise that not all illnesses can be proven, that most of the diagnosis is in the history, not in objective tests, and that the NHS cannot survive a world in which parents are unable to manage their children's colds without help from a doctor.

"Off the top of my head, copies of prescriptions and appointment cards are acceptable evidence"

we generally don't prescribe for colds - they usually only need paracetamol - and appointments are usually made over the phone so no appt card. And of course I'm sure I could go onto Amazon tomorrow and buy a stack of blank GP appointment cards......

The policy is illegal OP. I’d raise a complaint with the head and the governors if you want to fight it, or change schools. I don’t think I’d want mine at a school where the staff are so badly informed.

A child with a cold is not too ill to attend school, so that is a straw man argument. I have repeatedly said, and you have repeatedly ignored, that schools should only ask for evidence when there is reason to suspect there was no genuine sickness. They should not routinely ask for evidence for precisely the reasons you state. Nothing has changed. If you aren't being asked for huge volumes of sick notes for schools today, there is no reason to believe you will be asked for this at any time in future.

And yes, even a doctor's note can be forged. But that doesn't mean schools should simply give up trying to stop those persistent absentees where the parents claim fictitious illnesses as justification for absence.

We established that in November when this thread originally ran.

Many of my patients keep their kids off school when they have a cold. I regularly get parents taking up appointments to ask for proof of illness for schools. At least one a day. Multiply that by the number of GPs there are in the country and that's a lot of GP time.

Schools should know that if they want proof they need to write directly to the practice, and expect to pay a fee, if the information is available, which it may or may not be. That would concentrate their minds as to whether they really need it.

Sorry, to elaborate, I meant.......

I regularly get parents taking up appointments to ask for proof of trivial ililness which didn't need to see a doctor for schools

Many of my patients keep their kids off school when they have a cold. I regularly get parents taking up appointments to ask for proof of illness for schools. At least one a day. Multiply that by the number of GPs there are in the country and that's a lot of GP time.

That suggests you have a school locally that is not following government guidance and is demanding evidence when none should be required.

Schools should know that if they want proof they need to write directly to the practice, and expect to pay a fee, if the information is available, which it may or may not be. That would concentrate their minds as to whether they really need it.

I'm afraid that isn't how the government sees it. Maybe they should, but their guidance is clear that schools can ask parents for evidence. If there is any payment involved in getting the evidence, the parents must pay.

I’m not a teacher so I have no idea the pressure that’s on schools about attendance but from the way we’ve been treated it really feels like they are desperate for children to be in - ill or not to make sure attendance rates are consistently high. They don’t seem to like the few families with genuine medical needs dragging down their rates.

Parents should not be keeping kids out of school for minor illness such as a cold. Adults go to work when they have a cold, kids should be in school.

The fines need drastically increasing in my opinion, say a factor of ten at least, as it’s a no-brainer for some parents to think they’d rather sacrifice the kids education and pay a £120 fine and avoid £1.5k holiday fees.

"That suggests you have a school locally that is not following government guidance and is demanding evidence when none should be required."

schools plural I suspect. I know that you work in education/law but I wonder if you realise on the ground how much schools just don't know the guidance on things like this. Therefore we need a change in guidance to say that there is no situation under which a parent should be required to provide evidence. If a case meets the threshold to need it, it's up to the school to get it, and fund it.

And I completely agree with posters who say that kids who have a cold should go in.

It’s all puffing. They will never be able to get this through education. If you didn’t pay because your kid was sick what would they do ? Take you to court?! They would be laughed out .

I wonder if you realise on the ground how much schools just don't know the guidance on things like this

I come across far too many cases where schools (and local authorities) either don't know the guidance or deliberately ignore it - not just on absences. The first was my daughter's secondary school that tried to ban her from all trips due to her asthma after she had a serious asthma attack when a boy let off a smoke bomb on a coach. So I know all about schools that don't follow guidance or the law.

The letter you have attached only talks about unauthorised absence though, not sickness