£60 fine for illness- unauthorised - advice please

[Luckz66]

Hi all, desperately seeking advice please!
On 18/3/19 I kept my son off school for the week as he had a terrible sore throat and cough.
I called in the school everyday and gave them updates on him.
However, today I received a letter from the education authority stating I am being fined £60 for that week as the absences are unauthorised.
The letter didn’t even go to the correct address as the school somehow has my address wrong on the system and the guy from down the road has brought it up to myself.
Also, I have had one for my sons dad (we are not together) sent to the wrong address also.
I know that if he gets fined too will cause issues as he’s going to go mad at me for keeping him off school for what looks unauthorised but I only did it because he was ill.
Totally confused on what to do now!
Help please!

In my post above, "there child" should be "their child". Hate it when I post something and immediately spot a mistake like that!

In our LA (stating this as I accept each LA is different!), we as a school have to evidence we have tried to meet with the parents 2x before a fine can be issued (unless for a holiday). The parents also have to have been made aware they could risk a fine due to unauthorised absence, either in direct communication or whole school (eg. Newsletter).

Was the carpool actually prescribed from the GP? I would have thought that would have been enough evidence, if you've shown you had to take him to the doctor.

I've known a number of cases go to court for unpaid fines. In my experience, in the past almost all the school 'won' (if you want to look at it like that) and the parent received a fine in court (proportionate to their earnings if I remember rightly). More recently, our LA has been more particular about which cases it takes through. We now only issue PNs is there are the required 8 sessions that they parent has not attributed to illness at the time of the absence.
Otherwise the LA may decide not to take it to court, or it may go to court and the judge could look unfavourably.
Can you google your LA's code of conduct and see if there is anything specific?

I'd also challenge the school on the wrong addresses. Was it an admin error or was the school given incorrect addresses?

OP, if the Head has rejected your information that your child was sick and unable to attend school, then she is saying you are lying. I would be furious in your shoes and would be resigning immediately as a governor as I couldn't continue to work with a school that held that kind of opinion about my honesty and integrity. However, that doesn't help with your penalty notice issue.

I'm assuming the D&V was marked as authorised? ie they accepted the medical reason on that occasion. But as other posters have said, ,ask for a print out of the attendance record.

Our LA only issues penalty notices once unauthorised absence reaches 10 half day sessions (5 full days) in any 10 week period. I think that's a fairly standard policy.

So assuming the D&V was authorised, and in any case was over 10 weeks prior (as it was the previous term) they must have recorded the whole of the cough and sore throat week as unauthorised. IE they don't accept that he was too sick to attend school and/or they think you went on holiday (it being a Monday to Friday absence) and lied about it. That's outrageous.

So, can you assemble and provide proof that you were at home during the period (phone records, bank statements showing local spending in local shops etc)? That dispels any suggestion you went on holiday and pretended your son was sick. Which leaves the argument that you made the wrong judgment call and he was well enough to attend school. NHS website says that a child with a cough or sore throat shouldn't have to be kept off school. The school may therefore have rejected cough/sore throat as a valid reason. However, a child with a fever ie temp above 37.5 C should be kept at home until the fever has resolved. www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/is-my-child-too-ill-for-school/ If the doc prescribed calpol then I assume your child had an elevated temp for at least some of the period. Was this made clear to the school? Inform them (or reiterate) that your child had a fever - proof being the GP appt slip and prescription. At the very least, you are on firm ground that the absence on the days your child had a temperature was incorrectly marked as unauthorised. Any additional days you kept him home until he recovered properly might be more of a grey area (but wouldn't have taken you into the Penalty Notice zone, if they'd at least marked the first days as authorised).

The world's gone mad that you're being put in this position.

I work in a school and mark the attendance. This doesn't make sense to me. If a parent phones in to say a child is sick, then they are marked down as ill on the register. We would ask what is wrong with the child, and it would be marked as 'I'. This is different to unauthorised. That would only be recorded if we didn't know why the child was off, or the parent had taken the child on holiday etc. There must be more info OP isn't telling us or the school office have made an error in the attendance marks?

@tumpymummy many schools will mark absences unauthorised if they've passed a trigger point (low attendance) unless evidence is provided (or other circs eg. School sent the child home/ongoing reason like hospital admission/recovery or long term illness). I think this is fairly standard practice now.

All of these policies are all well and good but 1. they need to be clearly communicated to parents in advance and 2. a policy is not a document that's locked up on a filing cabinet somewhere, it's meant to be a living document that is followed AS SET OUT in the policy.

One of the things it might be useful for OP to ask for is the policies for absence/illness management (including trigger points) for both the school and the local authority. If the policy is written even half-well, it should include what and how the parent(s) will be communicated with at each point in the process.

Schools can't expect parents to work blind on these matters. If they don't tell you and then put your case straight to court, I'd say that's grounds in itself to have the case thrown out since it's impossible from the get-go to comply!

Schools can't expect parents to work blind on these matters. If they don't tell you and then put your case straight to court, I'd say that's grounds in itself to have the case thrown out since it's impossible from the get-go to comply!
Absolutely. I think it's fairly common for parents to not engage at all though and this is given as evidence against them.

Yes I don't disagree northface, not at all. I'm sure some (many!) pockets of parents just don't give a wotsit anyway, even if it was spelled out to them on a daily basis.

I try to be sure I understand and follow procedures and absence reporting (and I do) but honestly, sometimes it's made v difficult. Recent example. DD has awful period pains at times which we're seeing the GP for (and probably time to go back quite soon in a move from pain masking to diagnosis) and she didn't know if she could go in on a particular day. She retains excellent understanding of when she is and isn't due to be in school and what work she does/doesn't have left to do and when she will be able to do it. I didn't even KNOW she had exams that day, not even that she had them that week - had received NO information on it let alone a timetable from the school. I said I think you're too ill so no don't go in, teacher blasted me for allowing her to be off 'when she had an exam' (that in fact was something she'd already completed all the work for actually but hey ho). When I pointed out I hadn't even known she had any exams at all, let alone one for that day, she retorted that 'we like to let students be independent in sixth form'. Great, says I, I totally support that, but you could still let the parents know - HAD I known I would possibly not have said to her to stay off! So all they did in this particular instance, was shot themselves in the foot with a student who is always presents, doesn't fail to go to exams for the fun of it, and always - always - does their best work. I got a snidey "I'll be sure to inform you the next time she has exams". You're in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.