Many of us worry about the effectiveness of fining parents for taking holidays in term time.
Government guidance tells us that such pupil absence should only be granted in “exceptional circumstances”, and yet every year huge numbers of parents disregard the rules.
The most recent statistics available show that more than 350,000 penalty notices were issued in the 2022-23 academic year for unauthorised family holiday absence - an astonishingly large number.
This sense of a system that just isn’t working was reinforced this week by the findings of Parentkind’s National Parent Survey 2024.
It shows that 76 per cent of parents believe that every school day matters. And yet the majority of respondents - 57 per cent - said they would consider their child missing school for one or more days for a holiday. The same proportion said that the risk of a fine would not deter them from doing so.
Fining parents for pupil absence?
It seems like a contradiction that most parents agree with the importance of attendance while simultaneously being willing to take their child out of school.
And yet it is not really a contradiction at all but merely a sign of the competing pressures on families.
Most parents do support school attendance as being vital, but they also want to be able to take their children on holiday at a price that doesn’t bankrupt them.
For schools this is a huge problem. The sector is under pressure to reduce rates of absenteeism, which soared in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic
Attendance is mentioned no fewer than 55 times in Ofsted’s school inspection handbook. And absences contribute to teacher workload because of the time involved in helping children to catch up.
The threat of fines, however, is clearly not working at all well, even with the recently increased rate of £80 per child.
And penalty notices are a divisive issue when schools want to be working with parents.
Ditching fines altogether may, therefore, seem like a solution. But that would also come with problems. There would be no deterrent at all.
So, we need to be looking elsewhere for a solution - and that points us in the direction of the exorbitant prices being charged by the travel industry in school holiday periods.
That is also the conclusion of Parentkind, which suggests that the government should review the marketing and pricing of holidays primarily aimed at families to reduce the gap between the cost of a holiday in term time and one in the school holidays.
Of course, the hard economics are that this is a case of supply and demand. Prices rise in response to the market - that’s how capitalism works.
However, in this instance it does feel as though the market has been allowed to run riot and now effectively exploits the situation to maximum advantage.
The cost of travel in school holidays
There is a case, then, for government intervention to introduce some restraint on the extent to which travel firms are able to put up their prices.
It would relieve pressure on schools and families, reduce absenteeism and stop this from being such a divisive issue.
Regulation would, of course, have to be carefully considered and applied in a way that would avoid damaging an industry that is important to us all and supports many thousands of jobs.
However, it is difficult to believe that the astonishing mark-ups on travel during school holiday periods could not be controlled to some extent.
This is a classic case of striking a balance between social benefit and market freedoms. That may not be easy, but it is necessary.
Every child should be at school during term time, and every family should be able to enjoy a decent holiday. Those aspirations should not be in conflict with one another.
Pepe Di’Iasio is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders
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