Academic year 2022/23

Parental responsibility measures

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Introduction

This release includes information on parental responsibility measures for attendance in England, used by schools and local authorities to improve poor attendance in schools. 

The publication includes data on:

  • penalty notices 
  • attendance case management
  • parenting orders and parenting contracts
  • education supervision orders.

The data is collected from local authorities in England through the parental responsibility measures attendance census.


Headline facts and figures - 2022/23

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Penalty notices

What are penalty notices?

Penalty notices are issued to parents for failing to ensure that their child attends school.

The amount payable is £60 if paid within 21 days of receipt rising to £120 if paid after 21 days. If the penalty is not paid within 28 days, the local authority must either prosecute for the original offence or withdraw the notice.

There were 398,800 penalty notices issued in 2022/23

Penalty notices have returned to the upward trend seen before the pandemic, and are now higher than the latest pre-pandemic figure of 333,400 in 2018/19.

The majority of penalty notices, 356,200 (89.3%),  were issued for unauthorised family holidays,  1,000 (0.2%) were issued for being late and the remainder issued for other reasons.

The use of penalty notices varied greatly by local authority, with three local authorities issuing no penalty notices (as in the previous year) while four local authorities issued more than 10,000 penalty notices each. 28 out of 152 local authorities (18%) accounted for over 50% of all penalty notices.

Attendance at school was heavily disrupted in 2020/21, and for two months measures were disapplied when schools were not open to all pupils. No data was collected for 2019/20.

The use of penalty notices was increasing prior to the pandemic

Following a general upward trend from 2009/10 to 2012/13, regulations amended in September 2013, which stated that term time leave may only be granted in exceptional circumstances, are likely to be a contributing factor to the sharper increase between 2012/13 and 2014/15.

The changes in trend since 2015/16 follow the Isle of Wight Council v Jon Platt cases where the local authority issued proceedings against a parent who had taken their child on a term time holiday. Local authorities with large increases were asked to provide reasons and many cited the Supreme Court judgement, either as a result of returning to pre-court case levels following a slowdown or from a change in behaviour since the ruling. Further information on the cases are given below:

  • October 2015 - The magistrates’ court ruled that the parent had no case to answer.
  • May 2016 - The High Court supported the earlier ruling.
  • April 2017 - the Supreme Court, however, ruled that no children should be taken out of school without good reason and clarified that ‘regularly’ means ‘in accordance with the rules prescribed by the school’.

Attendance case management, parenting contracts, parenting orders and education supervision orders

What is attendance case management?

Attendance case management involves  a pupil specific approach to tackle absence problems. Following the introduction of “Working together to improve school attendance” from September 2022, local authorities should use this category to record any support work with pupils and parents expected by the new guidance. Depending on available data, this can include both: any early intervention work with pupils and parents, including cases where the local authority has worked with the school to support a pupil (but not been the lead practitioner), and also cases where a local authority team has held the case as the lead practitioner. Each case recorded should represent a specific agreed approach to tackle a pupil’s absence problems (whether authorised or unauthorised). 

From 2016/17, data has been collected on all attendance case management rather than just fast-track cases, therefore numbers from 2016/17 onwards are not directly comparable to earlier data. Fast-track is one example of attendance case management which sets out actions and a period for improving a child’s attendance.

LAs record and collect different data on support ; therefore, figures at local authority level are not directly comparable. For more information, refer to the Parental responsibility measures: methodology guidance.

77,100 cases went through attendance case management in the 2022/23 academic year. Of those, 51% of cases were withdrawn prior to prosecution.  In 2021/22  there were 68,200 cases and 59% were withdrawn.

What are parenting contracts?

Parenting contracts are voluntary but formal written agreements between parents and the local authority or the governing body of a school. They contain a statement by the parents agreeing to comply with the requirements of the contract, and a statement by the local authority or governing body agreeing to provide support to parents for the purpose of complying with the contract.

13,600 parenting contracts were offered in 2022/23. Of these, 10,300 were accepted (76%). 94 local authorities offered no parenting contracts in 2022/23.

In 2021/22 there were 14,900 parenting contracts offered, of which 9,600 were accepted (64%).

What are parenting orders?

Parenting orders are issued by courts following prosecution for unauthorised absence. They include a requirement for parents to attend counselling or guidance sessions and to comply with specified requirements.

30 parenting orders were granted in the 2022/23 academic year, in 15 local authorities. In 2021/22 there were 38 parenting orders. 

What are education supervision orders?

Local authorities must consider applying for an Education Supervision Order (ESO) before prosecuting parents. A local authority may apply for an ESO instead of or as well as prosecuting parents. The order is made in respect of the child and the local authority is appointed by the court to supervise that child’s education, either at a school or at home, for a specified period of time.

46 ESOs were issued in the 2022/23 academic year, in 12 local authorities. In 2021/22 33 ESOs were issued.

About the data in this release

Further data

Further data at regional and local authority level is available in the underlying data available under ‘Explore data’.

Data quality

School attendance was significantly disrupted in the 2020/21 academic year. As such all figures for that year should be treated with caution when comparing to other years. The pandemic also had significant impacts on the ability to travel and on tourism in general, affecting the number of penalty notices issued for unauthorised holidays. Except for the two periods of lockdown set out below, schools and local authorities were able to use their usual measures to improve attendance where appropriate.

Disapplication of offences in 2020/21

Due to the pandemic, the Secretary of State for Education issued legal notices, under the Coronavirus Act 2020, disapplying section 444(1) and (1A) of the Education Act 1996. These notices covered the period 7 January 2021 to 6 March 2021 which coincided with the period of national restrictions.

These notices disapplied offences relating to the failure of parents to secure regular attendance at the school of a registered pupil, and guaranteed that parents would not be prosecuted or receive a criminal conviction for not sending their children to school during this period. This was in line with the department’s commitment that no parent would be penalised for following public health advice.

No data is available for 2019/20

Due to the additional burdens faced by local authorities during the pandemic, a decision was also made not to run the data collection exercise for the 2019/20 academic year. This data has not been retrospectively collected and is therefore not available. Care should therefore be taken when looking across time periods that would otherwise include 2019/20.

During this period, disapplication notices were issued covering the period 1 May 2020 to 23 August 2020 which coincided with the first period of national lockdown.

Help and support

Methodology

Find out how and why we collect, process and publish these statistics.

Official statistics

These are Official Statistics and have been produced in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.

This can be broadly interpreted to mean that these statistics are:

  • managed impartially and objectively in the public interest
  • meet identified user needs
  • produced according to sound methods
  • well explained and readily accessible

Find out more about the standards we follow to produce these statistics through our Standards for official statistics published by DfE guidance.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).

OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.

Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Parental responsibility measures statistics and data:

School Census Statistics Team

Email: schools.statistics@education.gov.uk
Contact name: School Census Statistics Team

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If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

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