School Penalty Fines and Authorised Absence

Debate between Steve Double and Rosie Cooper

Monday 11th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double]

Clearly we do not want a free-for-all. I am arguing for discretion to be put back into the hands of headteachers, which was the case before the rule was introduced in 2013. To my observation—I have been a school governor for nearly 20 years—it was working perfectly well. Even in a place such as Cornwall, where there was high demand for taking children away in term-time because parents worked in the tourist sector, there was still conversation and co-operation between the parent and the school. It was not a free-for-all. There was co-operation between parents and schools, and I am asking for the same now.

As the NAHT says, we are driving a wedge between the family and the school, which is damaging to, rather than supportive and encouraging of, children’s education. We are creating tensions between the school and the family, which has to be detrimental to the child’s education.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

I have a constituency case in which a mother and the child’s father, from whom the mother had separated, were fined. The mother’s husband was also fined but he has no parental control at all. In that case, three people were fined. Does the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) agree that there is a fundamental lack of transparency, fairness and consistency in how the fines are being applied, and that headteacher involvement would start to address some of those ridiculous situations?

[Steve Double]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. One problem with the policy is that it is being applied inconsistently by different local authorities. Since I stuck my head above the parapet on the issue, hundreds of parents have contacted me with many different stories about how the policy is being applied. The case mentioned by the hon. Lady is a good example of inconsistency, as three parents have been fined for the same child. Greater clarity is needed. I agree that the answer is to give discretion back to headteachers and let them make the decision.

Many headteachers up and down the country are asking for their discretion back because they understand the tensions that the policy causes between schools and families. One of the most important things in a child’s education is that their parents are engaged with their education, which means having a good positive relationship with the school. That is far more important than what school a child attends or even how many days they are at school. If there is a positive, co-operative relationship between the parents and the school, the child will usually do well at school. Where tension is created, the relationship is damaged, which has to be detrimental to the child’s education.

[Rosie Cooper]

I have a letter from the Minister—I took the matter up with the county council, as the education authority—who says:

“Individual local authorities determine the circumstances in which parents can be fined”.

But staff at the local authority tell me that they have no involvement, that schools only apply the fines and that the Government set the policy. We really are in a mess and we need greater clarity to even begin to understand how the system is working.

[Steve Double]

Again the hon. Lady makes a good point, and one that I have come across as I have tried to follow the chain of responsibility. I have met with headteachers, Ofsted and local authority leaders, and there is a lack of clarity about who is responsible—it is a vicious circle. Sadly, that comes down to the ruling and the situation with the Department for Education, which made the blanket ban, and that is the very point that I am challenging.

The policy undermines the place of family and devalues the importance of family holidays in any child’s upbringing. The policy does not enjoy broad support: parents hate it; many headteachers I talk to dislike it hugely and want it to be changed; and even the Local Government Association does not support it. David Simmonds from the LGA said:

“The increase in fines reflected tighter enforcement by schools that are under pressure from Ofsted to meet attendance targets, as well as a rising school population”.

He called for more flexibility in the rules to allow heads to take account of family circumstances where absence is unavoidable. He said that heads

“should be trusted to make decisions about a child’s absence from school without being forced to issue fines and start prosecutions in situations where they believe the absence is reasonable.”

That is a common-sense approach.

I am sure that we all want a good education for all children in this country, but that is not what we are debating. The Government are trying to reduce truancy, which is a persistent problem for a very small number of students, but this blanket approach is not the way to achieve that; it is a blunt instrument hitting the wrong people. There is a big difference between truancy and parents who simply want to be able to spend a holiday with their children. It should be noted that children who are persistently absent are less likely than other children to go on a family holiday. Before the regulations were introduced, authorised family holidays accounted for 7.5% of all absences from primary schools, dropping to 2.5% of all absences from secondary schools, but absence for family holidays was lower, at 1.9%, for persistently absent pupils, compared with 8.2% for other pupils. The policy is focusing on the wrong families; it is hitting the wrong people.