Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of school attendance Fixed Penalty Notices issued in the most recent year for which data is available were preceded by documented support interventions under the Department's support first approach.

The department does not collect data on the support interventions undertaken before individual penalty notices are issued.

The government’s approach is that schools and local authorities should work with families to understand and address the barriers to attendance before considering legal intervention.

Statutory guidance makes clear that a penalty notice should normally be considered only where support has not worked, has not been engaged with or is not appropriate, as is usually the case for an unauthorised term-time holiday. Such holidays accounted for 93% of penalty notices in the latest year for which data are available.