Holidays in School Term Time 

Allison Gardner Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) for introducing the petition and the debate in Westminster Hall. As I have said previously, I am a teacher of 30 years’ experience, but I also have fantastic and wonderful children in my family who have certain difficulties. In the past, it has absolutely been the best possible thing for us go away on a family holiday for various reasons. We still think we did the right thing, so I see this debate from both sides.

As we have heard today, school attendance is absolutely vital to children’s development, for not just their academic skills but their social skills, as well as their mental and physical wellbeing. I am proud to support a Government who are committed to properly resourcing our education system. However, with an absence rate of 6.7% last autumn, we risk far too many children being left behind, and we have a unique situation at the moment post-covid. There are more difficulties with school attendance and in addressing the mental health problems of children, so I appreciate that we are in challenging times.

As we have heard, there are some very good reasons why a child may be absent, and there are children and families in my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent South who are in difficult—but sadly not unique—circumstances, including bereavement. Bereavement is never just a one-off but often a long sequence of events, so the point from the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade) was well made, and I thank her for it. Fines will not only beat those people down but fail to encourage attendance. If a family has a child with special educational needs and disabilities who is having a particularly difficult time, and who needs more time, the fine is not an incentive; it is a punishment for looking after their child.

As the petition clearly sets out, there are families for whom travelling outside term time is quite impossible. While costs are higher, planes and trains are also overcrowded, so it is not just about the costs, although there are families in financial difficulties. For children with special needs or in unique situations, travelling at very busy times can be challenging. We sometimes need family holidays in difficult times, and those difficult times do not respect term times, so taking our child out of school is the only option.

Again, this unfairly punishes already struggling families, and worse, it compounds an issue that already exists. I understand that there are still some exemptions at the discretion of headteachers, but as we have just heard, more needs to be done with them. From speaking to parents who have contacted me, and I spoke to one only this morning, I can say that that discretion is not always evenly exercised, so this is not hypothetical. In Stoke-on-Trent South, my constituents are 20% more likely to be living with learning disabilities than the national average. The parent whom I spoke to today has a neurodiverse child who, as frequently happens, went undiagnosed. As a result, he faced a series of circumstances in school, from which he experienced quite severe trauma, and he eventually became a school avoider. I want to stress that I know the mum of that family; they are good parents who have given up a huge amount for their child, and indeed they have a second child with special educational needs. The threat of fines does nothing to help them or their child, and it just adds stress on to stress.

I want to take a little time to go deeper into that story, which I heard only today. That parent was taken into school and told, “Right, we need to talk about fines. We are going to take you down the court process.” The threat of court was used against the parents, and as the child was having significant problems, when they tried to get him into school, he would have a meltdown. As we have all seen, if a parent is dealing with a very young child who does not want to do something, that child kicks and lashes out. The teacher saw the child being violent to their parents and it was even suggested that they use the youth offender system with a primary school child. They do not need that sort of stress. In the parent support group my constituent was given advice—and other parents report this too—such as, “Try making your home life more miserable so that they want to go to school.” That indicates the experience of parents who are fighting to do the best by their child, with children who do not want to go to school. They are just trying their best to manage, and the fines system is causing supreme difficulty for them.

I was a teacher for 30 years, so I know what it is like from the teacher’s perspective. When there is absenteeism teachers have to try to catch up a child who has been away while still trying to teach the other children and bring them forward. There are the gifted and talented children who are flying ahead, the children who need more direct support, and then there is the child who has been absent for two weeks and is saying, “I don’t understand anything, Miss, what’s going on?” It is really challenging, so I understand the perspective of the school. The education system and the teachers want the other children as well as that child to get the best possible education, but it is challenging to work in those environments. I see that side of things.

I have also seen countless children and parents struggling with attendance, not because the child just does not want to go to school, but as part of a more complex and unique set of needs that cannot be solved with fines. For those parents, especially those on lower incomes for whom the fines will be more damaging, there must be exceptions. With 30% of children in my constituency living in relative poverty—again, above the national average—the whole fine and court process is too punitive. Having to travel at expensive times is difficult.

The process does not produce the intended outcome of improving attendance. It taxes an already overwhelmed system, and places further burdens on those who need support, not punishment. We need a balanced approach that tackles those who take their children out for unwarranted reasons—I understand that—but that supports families who are struggling to best help their children. Sometimes that means taking them outside school in schooltime, to have a break and some respite—it is not a holiday; it is a period of respite. I therefore support the principle of the petition.