Marked as unauthorised and fined

[anywherebutthere]

Long story short we booked a family holiday. The majority of it fell over the Easter holidays, but some of it fell the first week back.
In total we were planning to miss 9.5 sessions, which would mean we wouldn't be fined, as it's under 10 sessions.
We had a night flight home and landed at 7am. We live 15 minutes from the airport and had all intentions of getting the children to school that day. When we landed the barrage handlers were on strike and it took 2 hours for our luggage to appear. We phoned school numerous times to update them and to say the children would be late.
We finally got them to school at 9.45am (45 minutes late)
This lateness has now been marked as unauthorised even though it was out of our control and we are being fined £480. It was originally £240 but we are trying to contest it and school haven't been open as it's the holidays so has gone past the 2 weeks early payment amount.
Realistically if this goes to court then do we have a leg to stand on? I believe we should have been marked late or authorised for the 45 minutes they were late to school that day.

İt's not really a choice, many people have no choice due to financial constraints.

İt's also like telling someone that if they don't agree with the way the NHS is run, and they don't like waiting months or years for appointments, they should just suck up the system because that's the health care they chose.

It's LA dependent most you cannot and it's published in council websites.

LAs only issue fines if schools refer to them. I dont know why people always say it's nothing to do with school. Schools can chose not to refer parents for fines.

I don't think you'll get out of it OP unfortunately,

Why should you get out of paying when others haven't for the same reasons?
Get a grip and pay the fine. You knew you were taking a chance and it's caught up with you.

You're being ridiculous. We got caught up in flight chaos May half-term 2022. We were due to be away Sunday to Sunday with an inset day on the Monday after we got back. We ended up not flying back till Wednesday evening, arriving home 4am. DS slept till 10.30.and was in school at 11 so 5 unauthorised sessions.

None of those 5 sessions were our fault, we hadn't deliberately missed any school. But that doesn't mean I should expect them not to be marked as unauthorised. It's not the school's fault Easyjet don't have enough staff either, or the LEA's.

I honestly have not a jot of sympathy, and I know this sounds harsh, but I bet you are the sort of parent who says 'OO well they missed loads during Covid'. Well, 2 wrongs don't make a right, so pay the fine

Surely low income families don't go on holiday - and if they do, they can't be low income can they

Good. Parents who plan holidays in term time should all be fined.

@ChristmasKraken define poor saving for years for 7 nights in term time is poor compared to kids that get 3+ holidays per year. But hey the squeezed middle don't matter in this country! Education isn't everything our degrees bring in around half our household income the rest is a side hustle that anyone could do. We actually started it to fund things like holidays we had as kids.

How old are your DC? Primary by the sounds of it. Six hours of probably disturbed sleep is not enough at any rate. It was madness to think they go fly home and go straight to school.

You took a massive risk and it backfired. Suck it up and make more sensible arrangements next time.

Definitely fight it. Rules around attendance in England are completely ridiculous and they don’t do anything to improve the quality of education of the students. Students who are home schooled or not schooled aren’t treated in the same way either. More parents need to push back and take their LA to court and get these rules changed.

Here in Ireland, the summer vacations are longer and schools encourage parents to take kids out of school for enrichment experiences. Interestingly, Irish students are in the top half of this survey of the highest performing students by country and the UK is in the bottom half…

https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/

If councils can fine parents for children missing a minute amount of school thrn parents should be able to sue schools/councils when education is not provided. Eg when all these schools are closed due to concrete and when done schools/teachers didn't educate children during lockdown.

Do not phone the school tomorrow. Leave it a few days. We’re dealing with all sorts of rubbish at the moment and don’t need petulant parents on the phone whinging that they haven’t beaten the system. And when you do phone, please don’t sound as entitled as you do on this thread.
You claim to know about your DC’s friend - you really don’t know what their situation is, nor the ins and outs of their dealings with the local authority over absence.
In your case, if you can afford a long haul holiday, you can afford the fine.

This!

Everyone: the school is right

OP: excuse after excuse after excuse after excuse…

Why post if you don’t listen to anyone?

100% this.

The way to challenge being to lobby MPs as I don’t think this is an issue currently where changing your vote would make a difference to any party getting enough support to realistically be elected to power.

Surely unauthorised absence should apply to everyone. I 100% know for sure that 2 children have been off for 10 sessions on holiday and not been fined.
How do they pick and choose? I get that I'll need to pay, but why isn't every parent fined?
"Archie was throwing paper as well miss why isn't he in detention?"
"Because you've thrown paper for two weeks every school year and this is the first time he's thrown paper."

So surely I'm within my rights to check that the lateness was marked as unauthorised correctly as well?
Late is where you turned up for the last thing and you don't arrive on time for the next thing. Absence is where you didn't turn up for the last thing and you're still absent until you actually turn up.

Re: the hospital, was it right before the holiday by some amazing coincidental chance? Because if so it will be counted as one big unauthorised absence and never mind what the hospital says (where have you even found a hospital that issue a fit note? Because they generally send you to GP for a note). Waiting for the drip feed that one of you works at a hospital and in fact wrote the note.

Now you can pay your fine knowing you haven't been wronged.
HTH.

The South doesn't have the inner city issues that England has. You don't have serious problems with children disappearing from school for weeks on end because they've been recruited into gangs or county lines drug dealing, or because their parents just can't be bothered to send them, or because they've been taken abroad for a forced marriage at 14 or for FGM and the school got told "it's an extended trip to visit family". I'm not saying these things aren't happening in Ireland but not in the same volume. These attendance laws are to protect kids.

You clearly have no idea what the schools are dealing with in England or why they have set these rules. But actually turning up to school goes a long way to doing well at school, and if there's one rule to stop kids going on drug runs or abroad for FGM that rule has to be fairly applied across society which is why the middle classes are getting fined for their term time holidays, and it's preposterous of you to suggest that Irish children do better because we went on holiday more during term time (especially given that the fines in England only came in relatively recently). Especially since we mostly end up having to come to England for work anyway.

I really genuinely do NOT believe that my pupil who went on holiday for 2 weeks to Egypt and whose mum asked me to reschedule his GCSE exams did better than the ones who stayed in school and turned up to their exams. OP hasn't said how old the kids are but the period around Easter is absolutely critical for any and all exams.

There are a lot of problems in England, and a lot of totally different problems in Ireland, and glamourising one over the other for the sake of nationalism is frankly preposterous.

Normally if the register closes and child not in class then teacher marks as no reason, then office/attendance person calls and asks where is xyz and then it get marked as whatever the reason is it’s emergency appointment then it will be medical with an end time, illness etc, depending on the system the school uses someone will have had to physically have clicked it into the their profile for that day, I assume if you said we are stuck at airport then you’re still on your unauthorised leave and it was recorded as such.

Behave. Take responsibility for your own actions, stop bleating that it’s unfair and pay up.

Pretty much what I was coming on to say as another ex attendance officer.

Also worth noting that the 10 sessions is a guideline, they could have referred you for a fine for less anyway.

I'd pay up and move on.

Can you explain why the other children in the OP's childrens classes should loose out on teaching time as the teacher has to cover the teaching points which the children missed during their hoilday?

The system is designed to provide mass education similar to how the NHS is designed to provide mass healthcare.

The OP failed to have her children turn up for 20 appointments. To minumise the frequency of this happening the system introduced a financial cost to the OP in the hope that the OP will learn to use the system the way it is designed to be used.

Because some people are idiots, and nothing is ever their fault. 😆

Your option is to check how the absence has been marked. What other people do and the consequences of that are not up to you. The only aspect you have control over, is checking on the absence mark and whether it’s authorised or not.