Has anyone gone to court over attendance fine?

[Stclements115]

Just briefly (I can add more info if anyone is interested and can offer advice) - We had to take our son out of school for 5 days due to a self employed work clash which meant we both had to be away from home and had no choice but to take him with us- we informed the school beforehand and they didn’t authorise and therefore we have both received a fine. My husband feels very strongly that he wants to contest the fine due to our unique situation. This situation is very rare for us but as self employed people (in a cost of living crisis) there are rare occurrences like this where we cannot turn down work.
Eager to hear from anyone who has declined to pay fine and gone to court in a similar situation? Thank you!

I’ve sentenced loads. Were they at school or not. If not. Fine.

It's bizarre.

Because OP didn't hear what they wanted to hear 😂 if you can afford to take off for work and take thon child KNOWING you will be fined, you can afford to pay a £60 fine and stop wasting everybody's time.

(I'm not "having a go" at you at all when I say this)

I am occasionally in a similar situation although not self employed but I am the sole source of income to our family.

My comment is, I don't have cash problem - I can pay for the childcare, but trying to access childcare that will take over for a few days is nigh on impossible where I live. It took an eternity to find a nanny a few years back and I went through agencies and childcare.co.uk (resulted in nothing). It's not at all as simple as it sounds.

OP I feel your pain. I'm travelling for work in a couple of weeks and I begged for the offsite dates to be adjusted - thankfully work accommodated me and we travel the day after school breaks up - kids are coming with me. I've got family at the offsite location who will help. I've no family in the U.K. (I'm not British) and their British dad is now absent.

I just wanted to say, it's sometimes not the money that's the problem, it's finding someone suitable that's can be a much bigger challenge!

@Anyfeckinusername Which is absolutely fine and completely understandable, especially when it's a single parent household. However, creating a thread asking for advice, than saying you were never planning on appealing it is dishonest.

Now if your child was registered as a traveller child then you wouldn't have to pay a fine in these circumstances.

I get it, fines for non-attendance are absurd and unfair (I had ~60% attendance for several years in secondary school, I dread to think what effect this would have had if my mum had had to pay fines). It's that feeling of unfairness that drives a desire for some kind of justice here, but obviously the courts aren't the way to do it.

The way to do it is to throw an egg at the education secretary.

What are you talking about? Of course you were contemplating it! That is literally what your thread is about.

In any case, I don’t know why you think your situation is unique. I don’t think I know any parent who hasn’t at some point struggled to find childcare to cover their work obligations. At least being self-employed means you have the choice to turn down the work without the risk of losing your job. And there are two of you! If your situation is unique in any way it is that you have more options than a lot of others.

I thought there was a code for this in registers and it shouldn't generate a fine.

No. There's no code for 'we have to take our kid to work abroad with us'. It would never be authorised, especially now when schools are under immense pressure to increase their attendance post COVID. LAs that never used to fine are starting to.

Because I wanted to enter into an informed conversation with my husband whose first reaction to this was that he didn’t want to pay the fine as he felt in our situation it was unfair. I was asking for past experience partly as I knew no one who had similar experience and partly so that I could talk to him and maybe help him to rationalise the situation armed with some gleaned real life experience. Because he wants to go to court and I don’t. This whole thread has turned into a bitch fest, I’m going to turn off notifications now. Thanks @BurscoughBooths@Theosfor responding with useful info, that’s really helpful. @Anyfeckinusername thanks for not joining the witch hunt! @ArnoldBee we are actually in the process of registering :)

Think l am getting it muddled with the traveller thing as a pp stated

A code for "parents decided to take their child out of school as they were both working away from home at the same time?"

Er no - because most people would organise for their child to stay with a friend for a week or, if an older child, let them stay at home on their own (which is presumably what they had to do while both their parents were working anyway) with someone keeping an eye on them. Or, if really no alternative, would turn down the work.

Parents having to work away isn't a reason for your child to miss school.

Traveller families are allowed to be absent from school for occupational purposes. So if traveller parents need to go away for work, their kids have authorised absence (code T on the register.)

Would it not be discrimination on ethnicity if non-travellers are not allowed to take their kids out of school for occupational purposes?

I would tell the school I identify as a traveller.

Move to Oxfordshire they don’t fine

Flouncers corner!

Are you actually GRT though OP? If you are, than you can possibly appeal the fine on that basis.

The code for the register is code T, and it includes show people etc.

Given men can identity as women, and ethnicity has always been self ID I would certainly challenge on that basis. Given you're travelling for work purposes, surely it's illegal to authorise one ethnicity, and fine another.

What crap. GRT are protected due to the nature of their culture. There's no such protection for others as the nature of their culture doesn't require them to travel.

@Levi1982 you'll get more replies if you start your own thread, there's a special needs board SN Chat and SN children. They can be quiet but tend yo be used by those with experience of the SEN system etc.

@Levi1982
I agree you will get more if you start your own thread, but my contribution is to scrape together the £400 or so (or even credit card and pay off) to have your son privately assessed for ASD and ADHD. They are umbrella terms for such a wide swathe of ND and without an individual assessment the school will be doing trial and error, often error by not knowing his specific needs and accommodations. A private assessment will include specific accommodations recommended by the Ed. Psych for your DS’ specific subtype(s) of ASD/ADHD

Why be so rude? They are asking for peoples experience. If everyone said "yep argued it and got out of paying! Easy!" maybe OP would have contemplated. Are you sat at home bored and looking for an argument? There are a load of passive aggressive comments on this thread calling OP passive aggressive. Odd

Not bizarre at all. Quite obvious what info she was after. I don't really understand the attitude and confusion behind some of these comments. Has OP wronged you in the past?

Is this in the UK? The going price for an ASD assessment in my area (Essex) is £2,000, and doesn't include an EP assessment.