School Penalty Fines and Authorised Absence

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The one-size-fits-all blanket approach is draconian, and often penalises the wrong people and leaves no grounds for the school and headteachers to decide what is best for the individual child.

Just last week I spoke to a primary school headteacher in my constituency and was surprised by what he said:

“The best thing that could happen to some of the children in my school would be for their parents to take them”

on a week’s holiday “even in term time”. That was a headteacher who knows the children at his school, knows the families and the pressures and challenges they face, and knows the community that they are a part of. I challenge the Minister: does he agree with that headteacher? Is there ever a case, a situation or a set of circumstances where the best thing for a child would be to miss a week of school in order to have a holiday with their parents?

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I am trying to understand the hon. Gentleman’s arguments and ask for clarification. Is he suggesting that parents should have an absolute right to take their children out for up to 10 days without any reference to the advice of the headteacher, or is he saying that the headteacher or another member of staff should be able to exercise a view on whether that request is authorised?

[Steve Double]

I will come to that later, but I make the point now that, of course, we are not talking about a free-for-all where parents can just take their children out whenever they like. I am arguing that we should give the discretion back to headteachers, with a degree of flexibility, so that they can decide what is right for each child in each unique set of circumstances and in each family situation, and, taking all matters into consideration, decide what is best for that child, rather than have a blanket ban.

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[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on securing this important debate. We are both south-west MPs, and this issue has particular resonance and significance in a region where tourism is an incredibly important part of the economy. I thank the Minister for being here and for meeting me to discuss a particular case. The meeting was useful, and I will mention more details of the case in a moment. I know he is listening, and I know he is open to some of our suggestions.

I am sure I speak for my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay when I say that we seek to be helpful. We are not seeking to cause problems, to rebel for the sake of it or to make a nuisance. All south-west MPs and Members from all areas of the country are being contacted by many thousands of worried parents and headteachers about their real concerns with the current position, and it is incumbent on us to inform the Minister and the Government of those concerns. I do not seek to create difficulty; I merely seek to raise an issue that many of my constituents, and I am sure many constituents of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, have raised.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I have a great deal of sympathy with some of the hon. Gentleman’s points, but will he concede that headteachers are also expressing concern that the current uncertainty, as well as the change requested by the petition, could make it more difficult for them to encourage good attendance, which they believe is important for the good achievement and progress of their pupils?

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I will discuss the specifics of the petition in a moment, but as I said in my opening remarks, it is not just parents but headteachers who are contacting us to express concerns about the status quo.

It is important to point out that nobody here, including my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay, is arguing that education should not be compulsory. Of course it should. Nobody is arguing, either, that parents should have an automatic right to decide that they want to take their children out of school for a set number of days a year.

That goes exactly to the point made by the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). Like my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay, I do not agree with the headline of the petition, which mentions bringing back the 10 days of authorised absence. We could argue for some time about whether it ever existed in the first place, but I do not support that idea. I do not believe that parents should expect an automatic right to a certain number of absence days a year, or that a headteacher should expect to approve them. I want common sense. I want the responsibility to go back to individual headteachers and individual parents, so that they decide what is right for individual children in individual cases. I keep using the word “individual” deliberately, because we cannot have a one-size-fits-all policy that seeks to impose a centrally decided rule on all children in all circumstances. We need the common sense of individual discretion back in the system.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I do not know whether she saw my remarks in advance, but I was coming on to say that what I want is a world where we recognise that the best people to make decisions for children in individual cases are their parents and their headteacher. Those are the people who should be making such decisions, and they need the discretion to do so.

Now, however, everyone is confused by the vacuum created following the Isle of Wight court case. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay suggested, we need some certainty from the Minister—I am sure that he will be able to provide it—about the Government’s position on the court case, which has left people concerned. In particular, the fear among headteachers to whom I have spoken is that under the existing regulations, if they authorise absences from their school, they will be penalised when Ofsted comes and looks at their absence statistics. Headteachers are rightly worried about the implications of that for the rest of their school.

We need a clear indication from the Minister that when headteachers decide that they wish to authorise an absence in individual circumstances, Ofsted will not count it against the absence figures for their school as a whole. Headteachers need the certainty that if they feel it is right to make a particular decision in the case of a particular child, they can do so without being penalised from above.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay mentioned the situation in Devon. Due to the uncertainty brought on by the Isle of Wight case, Devon County Council has now suspended all actions against parents, some of whom have been summonsed to court or made a first appearance before magistrates. That is absolutely the right thing to do in the circumstances, but I am afraid it merely adds to the sense of confusion.

One case that hon. Members may have seen reported widely in the national media at about the same time as the Isle of Wight case was that of my constituents Edward and Hazel Short. Mr and Mrs Short have two daughters, Nicole and Lauren, aged 16 and 15 respectively. Nicole and Lauren have represented England at volleyball. They are budding national athletes. This piece of paper in front of me—which is from the Daily Mirror, just to prove that there is absolutely no political bias in my choice of media—describes Nicole and Lauren as

“being hailed as stars of the future.”

This is their story: Nicole and Lauren were invited on a three-week training session. Two of the weeks coincided with school term time, and six and a half days’ absence from school would have been required. Their headteacher decided that he was not in a position to authorise their absence, and a fixed penalty notice of £60 was issued. Mr and Mrs Short decided not to pay it, and the next thing they knew, Devon County Council summonsed them to appear in court. They appeared before north Devon magistrates. They still did not accept the fine, and said that they would fight their case all the way.

Devon County Council then summonsed Mr and Mrs Short further to appear in court this month. When the finding in the Isle of Wight case went against the Government, as my hon. Friend said, Devon County Council decided that Mr and Mrs Short’s case, and a number of others with which it was currently dealing in the same way, would be suspended and no further action would be taken.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My understanding is that headteachers have the authority to allow a request for leave during term time in exceptional circumstances. Is the hon. Gentleman aware of why the headteacher, knowing that those young people had the potential to represent their country, did not consider the circumstances exceptional?

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

It is a perfectly reasonable question. I tried to answer it in advance by saying that there is always a concern about what Ofsted’s view will be when it considers absences on the school roll across the board. All headteachers are extremely concerned that if they authorise such an absence, it will count against them when their overall absence statistics are considered.

Let me be clear: I have no criticism whatever of the school or the headteacher for the decision that they made. They felt that they had no choice but to do so; that is the point. The issue of choice is fundamental. Parents and headteachers should, in exceptional circumstances, have the freedom and choice to allow absence. That is what they are currently being denied, and in my view that cannot be right.

I raise that case in particular not only because it is in my constituency but because it specifically did not involve giving the children a holiday; that was not the purpose of the absence request. Yet it is absolutely the case that in Devon, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay and many other constituencies, the tourism sector plays a vital role in the local economy, and it is being badly affected by the current situation. By some measures, one in six jobs in my constituency depend either directly or indirectly on the tourism sector. It is a vital driver of the local economy, and many families in my constituency work in it.

Not only does the current situation create the problem that many families are unable to take advantage of cheaper holidays during term time, but for the many hundreds—indeed, probably thousands—of families who work in the tourism sector in my constituency, there is no way that they can go away during the school holidays. That is the time when they run their family businesses, so they are impeded in their ability to take their children away. I am afraid that by not helping them do so, we are not helping the holiday business.

I have read the transcript of a previous discussion in the main Chamber between my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay and the Minister. The point was made that we need the Government to think carefully about changing the regulations, due to their effect on the tourism industry. I hope the Minister will not mind my quoting him. He said:

“I do not believe that we should be returning to the Dickensian world where the needs of industry and commerce take precedence over the education of children.”

No one is suggesting that. No one is suggesting that children should be allowed to be taken away from school to satisfy the wishes of a few small businesses. This is a bigger issue than that. In the same discussion, he also said:

“I doubt that the Cornish tourism industry will be best pleased by his”—

my hon. Friend’s—

“assertion that tourism in Cornwall is dependent on truanting children for its survival.”—[Official Report, 19 May 2016; Vol. 611, c. 139-40.]

The Cornish tourism industry is not, and I am delighted to say that the Devon tourism industry is not. In particular, the north Devon tourism industry is not; that is the best place to spend a holiday.

The point is that we are talking not about truanting children but about the right of parents and teachers to agree, in a few cases, that it is appropriate in the circumstances for children to be taken out of school for a family holiday if they might otherwise miss out on one. That is the point. Families and children are missing out on a family holiday through no fault of their own and face the risk of being dragged before the courts or fined substantial amounts of money. Headteachers feel that they are having taken away from them the right to make individual decisions in individual circumstances.

Perhaps another result of this debate will be that holiday companies, airlines and those that offer package holidays take a long hard look at themselves. They should not be charging such vastly inflated prices during school holidays. I shall cite one example, which I raised the last time we debated this subject. I think you were in the Chair for at least some of that sitting, Mr Hanson; forgive me for outlining this particular circumstance again, but it tells the story rather well. A package holiday to Spain for a family of two adults and two children beginning on 14 July would have cost £1,300. The same holiday, with identical flights and accommodation, beginning just two weeks later when the school holidays had begun, would have cost £2,000. That is a 60% mark-up. It would not be allowed in any other retail business, and we should not put up with it. It is not just the Government who I ask, respectfully, to think again about where we are; the holiday industry needs to take a long, hard look at itself as well.

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[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I shall make just a couple of brief remarks. First, I should say that I have not been contacted by individual parents wanting to express concerns, although I note that hundreds of them have signed the petition. I have a great deal of sympathy with parents, particularly those on low incomes, who want to give their children the opportunity to go on holiday and cannot afford to do so during peak periods when, as has been stated, the costs of some holidays are exceptionally high. I have, though, been contacted by the portfolio holder for schools at Nottingham City Council, and I have discussed the matter with a headteacher at one of my local schools. It is important to bring their representations to the Minister, even though I fear that many of my constituents will not thank me for doing so.

I understand that good attendance is vital to good educational attainment, which Nottingham City Council has been working hard to improve. The Minister will be aware that our city needs to make improvements and is very committed to doing so. The local authority has been working very hard to improve school attendance, which has involved fining parents for unauthorised absences when they take their children out of school without permission. I know that many parents will see that as very harsh and as a large stick; I myself do not like the idea that parents face fines. However, I understand the need to encourage parents to realise that getting their children to school on a regular basis, so that they do not miss time in the classroom, is exceedingly important.

The judgment in the Isle of Wight case has created huge uncertainty. Perhaps the most important issue for local authorities and headteachers is to have a degree of certainty and I hope that the Minister can tell us what he intends to do to provide it.

Sam Webster, who is the portfolio holder for education, employment and skills at Nottingham City Council and therefore responsible for schools, has said that it is

“worth noting that 90% attendance”—

which is the attendance rate in some of our schools—

“is not good and is the equivalent of a child having a day off every 2 weeks.”

I think that those of us who are parents appreciate that if our child had a day off school every two weeks, that would have an impact on their educational attainment, no matter how valuable the experience that they may be having in their time off school.

Last year, Nottingham City Council was the most improved local authority in terms of school attendance and I hope that the Minister welcomes that. However, the current uncertainty could see the good progress that has been made being lost. Councillor Webster’s call is

“for Government to act urgently to give greater clarity and ideally bring forward a change to the wording of the legislation.”

I hope that when the Minister sums up, he will respond to that concern, which has been raised by the portfolio holder responsible for schools in Nottingham.

The second point I will make was initially made to me by Giles Civil, the headteacher at Highbank Primary and Nursery School in Clifton, which is in my constituency. Giles has been the headteacher there for a couple of years now. It is a challenging school, which did not have great standards before his arrival and consequently progress has been challenging. Nevertheless, the school, which has fewer than 300 pupils, has managed to raise pupil attendance from 92%, the rate when Giles arrived there two years ago, to 94.8% last year. Obviously, there is still significant room for progress. Giles said to me that

“A school year is 190 days”,

but he also pointed out that for his school:

“total unauthorised absence for this year…is 939 days.”

As he explained, that is the equivalent of “4.9 school years.”

Giles feels that it is a real slog to raise achievement and that school attendance is absolutely vital. However, he also feels that the change has taken away his stick, if you like, and that it is important there is clarity on this issue, because he wants to raise attendance at his school and he is working in a number of ways to do so. Therefore, it is necessary to get some clarity from the Government.

As I say, I do not like the idea that parents are being fined, and the opportunity to take children away on holiday is really vital. I hope that the Government can consider how they can make holidays more affordable for parents and I also hope that the holiday industry will listen, as the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) said, and consider the impact that the current situation is having. Nevertheless, attendance is important and headteachers and local education authorities obviously need to be given clarity and some power or some guidance that allows them to improve attendance, as the current situation has created unnecessary uncertainty.

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[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I find myself yet again commenting on English education and looking at it with a different set of eyes, which I hope some Members throughout the Chamber will benefit from.

It is obvious from the debate that this is a difficult problem that is not easily solved. There is no blanket ban in Scotland, and no automatic fines for parents who take their children out of school without authorisation. Local authorities judge how to treat unauthorised absences. The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) made a passionate and informed speech, and as he said, the subject is not going to go away—almost 200,000 people have signed a petition on this difficult ongoing issue.

Parents need to know where they stand, and swift action is needed because of the Isle of Wight decision, which the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) referred to. The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay said that we need common sense, and as I listened to the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) it became more and more apparent that swift action is needed. They both have constituencies with tourism issues, and the regulations cause conflict for those who work in the tourism industry and those who support it.

Another important point is that it is sometimes not a holiday that is being considered but a trip that would make people better at their sport—volleyball, in the case that was mentioned. Andy Murray would not have got to where he was yesterday had he not been given leave at various times to attend tennis camps and pursue his sporting prowess. It seems unfair that regions in England treat unauthorised absences in such different ways, as can be seen from the number of fines that are issued in schools in the Isle of Wight and across Devon and Cornwall. The Minister should be able to respond to that situation and consider it with a bit more care.

The main point I have taken from the debate is that headteachers should be given back discretion, because they best know their own pupils and what works for them. That might well help the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), who is no longer in his place. One of his interventions regarded family bereavements causing people to go to Pakistan with their children, and those families then coming back to face horrendous fines.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Does the hon. Lady agree that it sounds like the problem is with headteachers’ confidence to use their discretion, rather than with their not having that discretion, which exists at the moment to consider exceptional circumstances?

[Marion Fellows]

I definitely agree with the hon. Lady. I find it strange that in the system in England, which is so different from the one in Scotland, authority is devolved away from local authorities and down to schools.

It is important that we listen to the almost 200,000 people who signed the petition, because this is a real-life issue for them and their families. Of course educational attainment is important, and of course there are links to attendance—as a former lecturer in a further education college, I can vouch for that—but when headteachers authorise absences for good reasons and teachers know about those reasons, they can provide homework and catch-up sessions, so students can generally catch up. I very much take on board what the hon. Member for Isle of Wight said: a two-week absence should be seen as a 14-day absence across the whole school year. If a student is attending regularly, a one or two-week holiday might not make much different to their attainment.

It is not acceptable to criminalise parents for taking holidays. Parents know what is best for their children, and in that regard I suppose I should declare an interest having, a long while ago, taken my children out of school for a family holiday. I could not have gone away later because I was pregnant with my third child and wanted him to be born in Scotland, not in Scarborough, which was where we were headed.

It is absolutely essential that we, including the Minister, take on board the fact that there is a real difficulty across the UK, not just in England, as parents do their level best to provide for their children in what are, for many, cash-strapped times. We have heard examples of how much additional money is needed to go on holiday in term time. A spokesman for the National Parent Forum of Scotland has said:

“We all know how important family time is, particularly when money is short. But we’d encourage parents to avoid taking their children out of school during term time, as it does impact on their learning.

It would be helpful if holiday companies did not increase their prices so much during school holidays.”

Perhaps the Government should look at that issue.

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[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend raises a real, practical issue about having different term dates in different parts of the country. That is something that the local authority and academies have to take into account when they consider changing term dates to reflect an industry or tourist needs in a particular region. They will have to weigh up the comparative advantage of that inconvenience versus the convenience of the industry that supplies the jobs in that area. That is why the decision needs to be taken locally by people who know how to weigh up those advantages and challenges.

That happened, for example, in Landau Forte Academy in Derby, which has operated on a five-term year since 1992. Eight-week terms are followed by two-week breaks and a four-week summer holiday. The academy feels that a shorter summer holiday is particularly beneficial for pupils from low-income backgrounds, who might not otherwise receive any stimulating activities in the holidays. It takes into account the dates of other local schools to ensure there is always some overlap of holidays. For example, one of its two weeks in October is always half term for other Derby schools.

Bishop Bromscombe School in St Austell, for example, improved school attendance by moving to a two-week May and June half term that allows parents to holiday outside peak times—[Interruption.] I assume that that is the school that my hon. Friend was talking about. It has now reversed that decision. If I had been quicker, I would have omitted that paragraph from my response.[Laughter.] I could, I am sure, cite other examples from around the country of schools that have taken advantage of that freedom.

Our reforms have put teachers in charge of their classrooms and headteachers in charge of their schools. Many measures are available to improve school attendance. Only when all other strategies to improve attendance have failed should sanctions such as penalty notices or prosecution be used. Schools, local authorities and the police have been able to issue penalty notices for unauthorised school absence since September 2004. There were 151,000 penalty notices issued for unauthorised absence in the 2014-15 academic year, up 54% from the 98,000 issued in 2013-14, indicating a continuation of the upward trend since 2009-10. The increase in 2014-15 was greater than the yearly increases prior to 2012-13, but it is lower than the increase of 88% between 2012-13 and 2013-14.

I believe it is right that local authorities and schools are actively addressing pupil absence. The impact of that can be seen in the historical downward trend in the absence figures, which show that, since 2009-10, almost 200,000 fewer pupils are persistently absent.

Although the Government are disappointed with the High Court judgment on school attendance, we are clear that children’s attendance at school is non-negotiable, and we will take the necessary steps to secure that principle. I recognise that the High Court judgment has created uncertainty for parents, schools and local authorities. Given its importance, it is essential that the matter is clarified, which is why we decided to support Isle of Wight Council’s request for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, and why I wrote to all schools and local authorities in England to make it clear that the High Court judgment does not establish that a pupil’s attendance above 90% is regarded as regular attendance.

Headteachers are responsible for deciding whether there are exceptional circumstances that merit granting a pupil leave of absence. My letter concluded by explaining to local authorities receiving requests for refunds that the decision in the Isle of Wight case does not require them to refund penalties that have already been paid. The Department for Education expects applications for such refunds to be refused.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I agree that 90% does not constitute sufficiently regular attendance. Do the Government intend to amend the current legislation to define the term “regular” to give local authorities and schools the clarity that they are looking for?

[Mr Gibb]

The Government will set out our next steps in due course and will make an announcement. In the meantime, as I have said, I have written to local authorities and schools setting out the current position, notwithstanding the Isle of Wight case. We have supported the Isle of Wight’s decision to appeal to the Supreme Court. That is the Government’s position, but we will have more to say about next steps in due course.

The Government’s commitment to reduce overall school absence is part of our ambition to create a world-class education system. That cannot be achieved if children’s education is disrupted due to preventable absences. The evidence is clear: every extra day of school missed can affect a pupil’s chance of gaining good GCSEs, which has a lasting effect on their life chances. That is why we take this issue so seriously.