Parents whose children miss a week or more of school face increased fines in a government drive to tackle absence.
Initial fines will increase from £60 to £80, and there will be a national strategy to ensure consistency across England.
This is a tougher stance after several years of the government moving away from the threat of fines, which became more common when Michael Gove was education secretary, a decade ago.
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More than a fifth of all pupils were persistently absent — missing at least a day each fortnight of school, according to the latest data. Families who take their children out of class without permission will face tougher fines as part of plans to boost attendance after the pandemic.
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The Department for Education (DfE) said that a fine must now be considered if a child missed five days of school for unauthorised absence. The fines start at £60, rising to £120 if they are not paid within 21 days, but the DfE has said that the minimum will be increased to £80, rising to £160.
Nearly 400,000 penalty notices were issued to parents in England in 2022-23 for unauthorised absences, which was much higher than before the pandemic. If parents do not pay the fines, they could face prosecution.
About nine in ten of the fines were for unauthorised holidays as families tried to book cheaper trips outside school term times, according to DfE figures released in December.
Government guidance is expected to clarify when financial penalties for school absences should be used to ensure that councils issue their fines appropriately.
Every state school in England will share its daily attendance registers with the DfE, councils and academy trusts. The higher fines are expected to come into effect from September.
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Rob Tarn, chief executive of Northern Education Trust and founder of England’s first attendance hub to advise other schools, has been appointed by the DfE as the new national attendance ambassador. Guidance setting out how schools and local authorities must take a “support-first” approach to help pupils and their families to tackle barriers to attendance will be made statutory from August, the DfE has said.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “Parents are likely to be surprised that at a time when schools are struggling to find enough teachers to teach classes, when buildings are crumbling and we are in the middle of a crisis in special needs provision, that the government is choosing to focus on increasing fines. Fines have long proven to be too blunt a tool and largely ineffective.”
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Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “It is not unreasonable to increase the level of fines for unauthorised absence given that they have been fixed at £60 for several years.
“However, it is important to understand that these fines predominantly relate to pupils who are taken out of school for term-time holidays. While nobody wants to be in a position of fining parents, there simply has to be a marker that this is not acceptable.”
