Authorised Absence from School

Debate between Steve Double and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered authorised absence from school.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

I have raised this issue with the Minister many times, both in debates and directly. I have campaigned for the Government to review and change their policy for some time. I remain of the view that it is not the role of the state to dictate to parents what is right and best for their children; that should be decided in partnership between parents and the school. I wanted to raise the issue again today in the light of a number of recent developments and cases that have been brought to me, both by constituents and by parents elsewhere in the country.

Part of the problem is that although the Government say that absence from school should be authorised by headteachers only in exceptional circumstances, they do not provide clear guidance as to what constitutes an exceptional circumstance. That has led to a degree of confusion and complicated situations, as was highlighted recently by the climate change protests, during which thousands of schoolchildren took time away from school to attend the demonstrations. I am reliably informed—it has been reported—that many of those children were given authorised absence to miss classroom time in order to attend those protests. Leaving aside the point that I do not see how something can be called a strike when people have been given permission to be absent, parents should be able to expect some consistency in the application of the policy.

I do not have a problem with children missing time from the classroom to attend those demonstrations. Education is about far more than what takes place in our classrooms, and attending such events broadens children’s experiences and knowledge and gives them a wider view of the world, so it is incredibly beneficial to their education. However, I need to challenge the inconsistency. Headteachers have granted leave for children to attend those demonstrations, yet in many other cases that I am aware of, parents have requested authorised leave from school from headteachers for what most reasonable people would consider to be equally good reasons and have been denied.

I know of children who had been selected to compete at international level in their sport, yet their school refused to grant them leave to go and represent their country. I know of one child whose parent requested one day off school—the day before the school broke up for Christmas—so that he could fly to see his father who he had not seen for a year, yet the school refused that request for leave. There seems to be huge inconsistency in applying the rules, and I do not believe it should simply be down to headteachers to determine for which events or experiences it is appropriate for children to miss school. Making that decision should primarily be the responsibility of parents, in conjunction with the school.

The current policy came in in 2013. It was brought in through a statutory instrument and no impact assessment was carried out. As I have said many times to the Minister, the lack of an impact assessment was an oversight or a mistake by the Government. Until that time, a common-sense approach allowed headteachers discretion to decide when it was appropriate for children to be given leave to be absent from school for a number of reasons. I still argue that headteachers should be given that discretion, because they know the pupils, the families, the communities that they are part of, and the particular pressures and challenges that such a community might face. They are therefore best placed to make the decision in conjunction with the parents, rather than be dictated to centrally.

The rules are applied inconsistently across the UK. Fines are not imposed in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and even though fines are imposed in Wales, a report commissioned by the Welsh Government showed that they are not working. The number of unauthorised absences has gone up since 2013, particularly for family holidays, so the rules have not reduced the level of unauthorised absence in the way that was expected.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has secured this debate on an extremely important subject. At Timothy Hackworth School in my constituency, there are real worries that if it falls below 96% attendance, because a contagious disease or another perfectly valid reason pushes the number of absences up, Ofsted will mark it down. Will the Minister address the question of whether Ofsted is so inflexible that every school has to achieve 96%, irrespective of circumstance?

[Steve Double]

I am grateful for that intervention. I will probably elaborate further on the hon. Lady’s point, but she is absolutely right that the drive to attain an attendance level above everything else, with no recognition of the welfare of the children involved, seems to be overriding common sense. One headteacher told me recently in a meeting, “If our school was outstanding in every other respect, but we fell short of the attendance target, we would deemed as ‘requires improvement’ simply for missing the attendance target.” That situation seems bonkers to me. Rather than looking at the wider picture of what is right and best for our children, schools are being driven by the Ofsted inspection regime to focus on an attendance target above all else. I will cite a few examples showing how that has been detrimental to the wellbeing and welfare of children and families in our communities.

We now have a situation where parents who for perfectly legitimate reasons are unable to take a family holiday during the school holiday period are basically subject to an arbitrary tax imposed by the local authority for taking their children out of school. Is the Minister’s Department aware of how local authorities are spending that money? As far as I can see, literally tens of thousands of pounds is being collected by local authorities through these fines, yet no one seems to know how that money is spent. It would be reasonable for parents to know how the extra tax they are paying is being spent.

For many families, the fines are no deterrent, because they are less than the money they save by taking their children on holiday during term time. If having a cheaper holiday is their motivation, facing a fine is not a deterrent. What it does do is penalise the poorest families in our society. It is a regressive tax. In my constituency, many simply cannot afford a holiday in peak season. We are saying to those poorer families, “Because you cannot afford it, you cannot have a holiday unless you face this additional fine.” It is a regressive situation.

Additionally, the fine hits small business owners the hardest. I have many small business owners in my constituency, particularly in the tourism industry, who are simply unable to take time away from their business during the peak season. That is where they make their money. They are faced with either taking their children on holiday out of peak season when business is quieter and they can afford to have a week away, or not having a family holiday. I say respectfully to the Minister that any policy that hits the entrepreneurs and small business owners of our country in particular should have no place under a Conservative Government. We are targeting the very people we say we stand up for.

A key point that I want to make is that the policy is clearly incredibly unpopular with parents. I am grateful to the parliamentary digital engagement team, which put out some public engagement on social media ahead of the debate. We have seen literally tens of thousands of responses. Mumsnet posted it, and it was the post that attracted the most attention in the whole month of May.

Many parents clearly feel strongly about the policy, but my key point is that it damages the relationship between parents—the family—and the school. It pits one against the other. I was a school governor for 19 years. Sadly, I had to step away from that when I was elected to the House, as I simply did not have time to do it any longer, but I know from that time that at the heart of good education is a partnership between the home and the school. We have got to get away from the concept that education takes place only in the classroom. Education is about the whole of life, and parents have a crucial and central role to play in any child’s education. When that works well, it works in partnership with the school.

Time and again, I have seen this policy break that constructive and positive relationship between parents and the school. Constituents have told me that, because the school refused to give them authorised leave and they were then fined, they refuse to fundraise for the school or volunteer to support it. The policy is counterproductive. We should be encouraging positive relationships between parents and schools, but our policy is damaging that relationship. Whatever gains the Department for Education may feel it is making in education by getting children to be in the classroom more often, I would suggest we are losing out from the loss of good will between parents and the school, and the breakdown of that positive relationship.

[Helen Goodman]

Perhaps I can trespass for another couple of seconds on the hon. Gentleman to say that he is absolutely right. Furthermore, we see rising mental health problems among children and young people, and this kind of stress is exactly what families do not need.