Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to provide additional funding to schools to help support the administrative workload resulting from the attendance and penalty notice regulations introduced in August 2024.

The changes to the regulations governing the school attendance register simplify and consolidate what is recorded in the attendance register by schools, reducing their complexity and burden on schools.

The changes to the penalty notice regulations aimed to improve the consistency in how penalty notices are used across the country, ending the previous postcode lottery. 81% of school or academy trust respondents agreed with the idea of a consistent national threshold for considering a penalty notice in the 2022 public consultation, which is available here: https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-attendance-policy-and-strategy-team/school-registers-and-national-thresholds-for-legal/supporting_documents/Consultation%20Document_Pupil%20Registration%20Regulations_Thresholds%20Legal%20Intervention.pdf.

Local authorities require information from schools to process a penalty notice. How this is done is agreed locally and should not place an undue burden on schools.

We will keep the policies under review through regular engagement with schools.