492,825 parents fined due to school absence, new rule to start from September 1

More and more parents are being sent to court after taking mid-term holidays

Mums and dads have been warned that “cheap travel is not an excuse” to exempt their kids out of school for mid-term holidays.

These families face fines, as well as a theoretical three months of prison. 

One family exempted their child for a 10-day holiday, which resulted in the child’s annual attendance rate to be under 75%.

Magistrate courts are seeing more and more parents summoned to court due to this epidemic. 

The magistrate said to a father: “You have a duty to send your daughter to school, and the council has a duty to prosecute you if you don’t."

The father was promptly fined £166 after pleading guilty. 

However, new school attendance targets are being launched in September under Labour Party PM Andy Burnham.

The rule will take each mainstream state school’s local circumstances into account, meaning each school will now get an independant target.

This means that each school will be monitored rather than simply issued.

Alongside, Paul Waugh, the Education Minister, who has asked schools to “look hard at Fridays", which he describes as a “particular weak spot.”

One spokesperson from Kent county said that taking parents to court was “not a decision that is taken lightly and only where all other routes have failed.”

Prime Minister Andy Burnham hopes to decrease fines on parents with the new rule change as the national average for school attendance decreases.