UK Govt. Fines Families For Taking Their Children Out Of School For Holidays

Adeline Pilford has just been fined 324.37€ by Surrey County Council after taking sons Milo, nine, and Rocco, eight, who is autistic, (all main picture) out of school in the first fortnight of June for the fourth year running.

The Pilford family are pictured enjoying their holiday in the Greek sunshine island of Kos in June 2014, bottom right. Shahnawaz Patel was also prosecuted for taking his sons Omar, 11, and Eiad, eight, (top right) out of primary school to visit their desperately ill grandfather in Gujarat, India, in December last year.

According to figures released by the Ministry of Justice, more than 16,000 parents have been prosecuted for failing to ensure their children went to school, a 25 per cent rise on the previous year. And many of those charged initially refuse to pay the penalty, but risk a jail term.

A Government crackdown on truancy imposed by the then Education Secretary Michael Gove in September 2013 decreed only cases considered ‘exceptional’ are granted permission for term-time leave. But there is widespread confusion about what qualifies as ‘exceptional’.

Schools are now encouraged to refer unauthorised absences to their Local Education Authority (LEA) to impose parental fines. If these aren’t paid, parents face prosecution, penalties of up to 3,378.83€ and a three-month prison sentence.

But some parents who were recently fined said they think the government should sympathize with them instead of punishing them because they had been through one problem or the other and view the holiday as essential respite.