Schools should to be able to approve family holidays in term-time, says LGA
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- 21 Oct 2020
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Local authorities are calling for headteachers to be able to approve pupils taking family holidays in term-time, a move that would end a controversialpolicy that has led to a sharp rise in the number of parents being fined for unauthorised absences.
The Local Government Association, which represents 370 councils and boroughs across the country, wants the Department for Education to dilute regulations it introduced in England two years ago restricting the ability of headteachers to authorise pupils to take term-time breaks.
The new policy has led to a drop in the number of state school pupils taking authorised holidays in “exceptional circumstances”, but the proportion of those taking unauthorised holidays has barely changed, according to official statistics published on Tuesday.
“Children’s education is treated with the upmost seriousness but it is clear that the current system does not always favour families, especially those that are struggling to meet the demands of modern life or have unconventional work commitments,” said Roy Perry, the chair of the LGA’s children and young people committee.
“There has to be a sensible solution whereby every family has the option to spend time together when they choose to, without fear of prosecution from education authorities.”
Schools minister Nick Gibb said the government would be sticking to its guns and said teachers had discretion to grant leave in exceptional circumstances.
“If the request is for something that could easily take place in the school holidays then the headteacher should not give permission, and that would include holidays,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“But if it’s for something like a funeral, then the headteacher would be able to give permission, but not for an extended holiday on the back of that funeral.” Children can also be granted leave when long-serving service personnel come home from tours of duty abroad, he added.
Gibb said it was necessary to tighten the rules in 2010 because there was “an impression given that every parent was entitled to two weeks’ leave to take their child on holiday and that was increasing”.
“Our data shows that just a week off a year in the leadup to GCSEs can reduce that child’s chances of getting good GCSEs by up to a quarter. Any absence, even if it’s an illness actually, can damage the long-term chances of a child.
Under regulations introduced in September 2013, schools in England no longer have the latitude to approve term-time holidays apart from in “exceptional cases”, according to the DfE’s guidelines. The result has been a surge in the number of fines and prosecutions of parents for unauthorised absences.
Headteachers previously had discretion to grant up to two weeks’ term-time leave to pupils with good attendance records.
Parents can be issued with fines of £60 per child by local authorities, rising to £120 if unpaid after three weeks. Courts can issue fines of up to £2,500 or jail sentences of up to three months in extreme cases, although those usually involve extended absence or truancy.
Craig Langman, the founder of the organisation Parents Want a Say, called the current policy “a massive sledgehammer to crack a nut”.
“You can’t have a blanket ban. All that does is basically tell everyone: sorry you can’t have any time off, in term time, you can’t have quality family time. People cannot always take time off during the school-allocated summer holidays,” he told Today.
“The very people servicing us while we want to take our kids on holiday – when are they going to take time off, when they’re servicing our needs? It’s just not practical.”
The policy came under threat last week after a magistrate in the Isle of Wight threw out a case against a father who argued that his daughter attended school regularly despite taking her on a family holiday to Disneyworld in Florida during term time.
Gibb said the case in the Isle of Wight would not set a precedent for future absences by children in term-time, because the ruling was made by a magistrates court.
The LGA said that a “reasonable, common sense approach” to term-time holidays should be allowed, which would in effect return to the policy in force prior to 2013.
“The current rules tie families to set holiday periods. They make no allowances for what a family would class as a special occasion or takes into account a parent’s worklife,” Perry said.
The latest figures published by the DfElshowed that the new policy has been effective in deterring parents from taking holidays during term time. Before the 2013 school year, authorised family holidays accounted for about 5% and 6% of pupil absences. But since then the proportion dropped to 2.3% in 2013-14 and 1.2% in 2014-15.
As the proportion of authorised absences has fallen, so the percentage of unauthorised holiday absences has risen, from 3.2% in 2012-13 to 4.4% in 2014-15.
As a proportion of all pupil absences in terms of school days lost, unauthorised absences have stayed unchanged at 0.2% of pupil days since 2012, while authorised family holidays, which accounted for 0.3% of total pupil time in 2012-13, fell to just 0.1% in 2014-15.
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In total, 32.7m pupil school days were missed owing to authorised absences in the autumn term of 2012 and the spring term of 2013, with the total falling to 28.6m pupil days in 2014-15.
Gibb hailed the latest figures as proof that the government’s policies on pupil absence were making “real progress”.
“We took action to reduce absence in 2010 by taking a tougher approach to children regularly missing lessons and by increasing fines,” he said.
“Together with our reforms to improve behaviour and plans to crack down on truancy by deducting the cost of unpaid fines from child benefit, we have put heads and teachers firmly back in charge of their classrooms so they can extend opportunity and give the pupils the best start to life.”
