Another one about school fines

[schoolgatepolitics1]

I really need some advice as so many confusing threads on this topic. Single parent, took my child out for one day; first day off in 4 years. Didn’t tell school but wrote in on day off to say they will be absent. Have near perfect attendance record. Other families have take notice mulitiple days off and not being fined. Council says they don’t make the decisions who to fine, head teacher does and submits names to them. Guess my question is has this happened to anyone else and why is the school submitting some names to council and not others despite all their absences being unauthorized. Totally prepared to pay the fine but just don’t understand what seems like discriminatory application of the policy.

I deal with attendance in a primary school. Our HT cannot impose fines. The Education Welfare Officer visits me monthly and looks at our attendance data. I will have already sent standard letters about attendance “we are monitoring.... important to attend school....” etc which the HT signs. The EWO will take on (with NO request from us) low attenders and start directly contacting the families (naturally we will present a case to her... last year she wanted to crack down on a pair of siblings with poor attendance but we persuaded her that as the reason was grief following death of their mother she should give leeway). The EWO decides who is referred for fines and or court action in this area, not the HT. I’ve never known one of my parents receive a fine but some of them have been called to court.....

Having said that, I am sure you are right that some families use the fine as part of the cost of a holiday and ignore the evidence that term time holidays harm their child's education.

Based on the holiday leave forms and conversations we staff have had with people at school this is definitely the case in several cases.

The persistent absentees are dealt with very differently at our school, with a lot more pastoral efforts taking place both in and out of school, involving child and parents.