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’.