Booking a holiday? don`t incur a fine by making your child miss school

In case you missed the news bulletin, spring officially began last Wednesday, on the 20th march. The long winter is finally over, and people are already talking about their holiday plans. The travel brochures are coming out, hotel guides are being perused, and conversations are turning to the summer. Perhaps a trip around Europe would be nice, or even a holiday in America, if we book a ticket now it won`t be too expensive.

If you are a parent with a child at school, you should ensure you don`t make a booking that clashes with their term time. It`s actually against the law to make your child absent without permission from the school - and a holiday is not an acceptable reason to have them miss classes. Those parents who choose to break these regulations may face criminal charges, and will almost certainly be presented with a hefty fine when they return from their vacation.

The number of fines issued to parents has been growing steadily over the last few years, as ever more parents choose to contravene regulations, and take their children on holiday during term time. The rise has indeed been precipitous, with the number of penalties actually doubling during just a single year. The Department for Education (DfE) has said that `Unauthorised family holiday absences` have risen by 93% to almost 223,000 between 2017 and 2018.

You may recall a notorious case during 2015, where a father took his daughter on holiday to Disneyland during term time, and was actually convicted of failing to secure his child`s regular attendance. The father, Jon Platt, took his case all the way to the supreme court, eventually losing the legal battle in 2012, having to accept a 12-month conditional discharge and a fine of £2,000.

At the moment councils are empowered to fine parents £60 for each child taken out of school without proper permission. If payment isn`t received within 21 days the fine rises to £120; and if after 28 days no action has been taken the parents can expect prosecution.

Many people have decried the overly authoritarian steps taken by schools and councils, protesting that they have a right to enjoy holidays with their children, and that trips abroad offer their own kind of education. An understandable complaint regards the price increase slapped on by airlines and hotels during the holiday period - which means many parents simply can`t afford to go abroad during the summer, Easter or Christmas breaks.

During the 2017-18 academic year there were 260,877 penalty notices issued by the council for unauthorised absences from school. These certainly aren`t small numbers, exceeding as they do a quarter of a million; and it would be distressing to think that hundreds of thousands of children are missing out on weeks of their education. I suspect that the penalty notices concern only a few days, perhaps at the start or end of a school term - but the fact remains that these schoolchildren are missing out on important lesson time.

Out of all the penalty notices issues During 2017-18 there were 19,518 prosecutions, so around 7.5% of parents or guardians refused to initially pay the fine. This figure is up sharply from 13,324 only the year before, where 5.0% refused to make payment.

The Campaign for Real Education has expressed the view that fines should only be used as a `last resort`. It maintains the policy though that it`s irresponsible and damaging to a child`s education for them to miss out on schooldays to go on holiday.

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education and a retired head teacher, said making a child miss lessons simply to go on a `cheap holiday` was a `remarkably selfish action`, that could well have a lasting detrimental effect on their education. One wonders how he determined that parents committing these `selfish` acts always choose low budget holidays - but he went on to say:

`Teachers are distracted from their regular teaching by having to help the absentees to catch up,`
and added that term time holidays were mostly `for the benefit of the parents, rather than the children`.

Of course even just missing a single lesson can be a huge impact for a child, one they may struggle to catch up on - but it would be a shame if many children lost the opportunity to travel with their families. Travelling abroad brings its own kind of education, especially for a child. Being in amongst the hustle and bustle of another country, another culture, can bestow a learning and knowledge that cannot be found in the classroom.