A record 350,000 parents in England were fined for taking their children out of school on unauthorised holidays last year, figures show, highlighting the struggle over attendance facing headteachers since the Covid crisis.
The statistics from the Department for Education (DfE) reveal that holidays accounted for almost 90% of the 399,000 cases of parents being given a penalty notice by local authorities for their children’s unauthorised school absences.
The sharp rise in fines underlines ongoing concerns of a breakdown in relations between schools and parents over attendance and behaviour, including warnings by headteachers and Ofsted of increased “friction” with parents since the prolonged school closures during the pandemic.
The total number of fines issued in 2022-23 was 20% higher than in 2018-19, the last full year before the pandemic hit, and equates to a fine for one in every 20 pupils aged between five and 16 at state schools.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it was difficult to explain the surge in unauthorised holidays.
“It could reflect a shift in attitudes to schooling among some parents who see attendance as flexible when of course this is not the case at all. Or it could reflect parents wanting to take advantage of off-peak holiday prices because of the rising cost of living,” he said.
“Whatever the case, nobody in education wants to be in a position of fining parents. However, it is just not manageable to have families taking holidays in term time.”
The rise in fines follows continuing high levels of pupil absences last year, including those caused by illness or mental health problems. In 2019 and earlier, overall absence rates hovered at about 4.5%, but in 2022-23 it rose to 7.5%. In the current school year, since September, the absence rate is about 6%, concentrated in secondary schools.
A DfE spokesperson said: “Parents have a duty to make sure their child regularly attends school, and holidays should be around school breaks to avoid taking children out of school during term time. Our guidance is based on a support-first ethos; however, we support schools and local authorities to use punitive measures such as fines where it is deemed appropriate.”
The DfE’s statistics also reveal considerable variation between England’s councils in fines. More than half of the fines were issued by 28 of the 152 local authorities, with Essex handing out nearly 13,000 and Bradford 12,500. Doncaster, Rochdale and Wakefield councils issued fines to the equivalent of 15% of pupils taught within their local authorities, compared with 5% nationally. Meanwhile, the DfE recorded no fines issued by Warrington council last year.
Regulations in England allow councils to issue fines of £60 a parent for unauthorised absences of five days or more during the school term, and some schools complain that the sum is too small compared with the hundreds or even thousands of pounds that families can save by taking flights and accommodation out of peak holiday season.
The number of fines for unauthorised absences in England had been slowly rising even before the pandemic. Since 2013, headteachers have been able to approve term-time absences only in “extraordinary” circumstances, such as funerals, but the numbers of unauthorised holidays have been creeping up.
Previously, headteachers had been able to grant up to two weeks of holiday for pupils with good attendance records.
This year there were also record numbers of cases of students caught cheating or breaking rules while sitting A-level and GCSE exams this summer.
Data published by Ofqual, the exam regulator for England, shows that the number of students breaking exam regulations increased by almost a fifth in 2023 and is now far higher than before the pandemic.
Ofqual said there were 4,895 cases of “malpractice” penalties out of 17m exam entries this summer, with more than 40% of cases involving a “mobile phone or other communication device”. In 2019 there were just 2,950 cases of malpractice, rising to 4,100 in 2022.
In 20% of cases, students were punished by losing their full marks for the exam, while 49% had marks subtracted and 30% were given a warning. Cases involving cheating or maladministration by school staff fell, to 220 this year compared with 240 in 2022.
