Early data on school attendance suggests steeper fines for pupil absence have not had a “meaningful” impact, a union has said.
The government hiked fines in September for unauthorised school absences, with the penalties for parents rising from £60 to £80.
But attendance data issued by the Department for Education on Thursday suggests an improvement of just 0.2 per cent in average attendance since the increase was rolled out.
For the academic year to date, the attendance rate is 93.4 per cent, compared with 93.2 per cent over the same period last academic year.
However, the persistent absence rate has fallen by 1.6 per cent – from 20.3 per cent last year to 18.7 per cent.
But for the week commencing January 6 – the first week of 2025 for which there is data – absence was slightly higher than for the same week last year.
Focus on ‘root causes’ say leaders
Differences between last year and this may in part be due to new government policy, which has made it compulsory for all schools to submit daily attendance data. A daily tracker pulls data from schools’ electronic registers.
The school leaders’ union NAHT is calling on the government to focus on the “root causes of non-attendance”, rather than penalising absentees.
Paul Whiteman, its general secretary, said: “We have long argued that fining parents is a blunt tool that does not get to the root causes of non-attendance. We did not believe that increasing these fines would shift the dial in any meaningful way.
“The last government failed to invest anything like enough in early support for families facing challenges in their lives, including poverty and mental health.
“It will be vital that the new administration builds on measures such as its register of children not in school by investing more in services like social care and children’s mental health – and it’s important that its child poverty taskforce leads to tangible action.”
