Academic year 2023/24

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.

This data is for the 2023/24 academic year and therefore relates to a period before the changes introduced through the new National Framework for Penalty Notices came into effect on 19 August 2024. Local authorities may have introduced some changes in their own policies in preparation for the new framework. Data relating to penalty notices issued under the new framework will be covered by the next release. Further information on the changes is included in the methodology.

Related information

Releases in this series

View releases (10) for Parental responsibility measures

Methodologies

Headline facts and figures - 2023/24

Explore data and files used in this release

  • View or create your own tables

    View tables that we have built for you, or create your own tables from open data using our table tool

  • Data catalogue

    Browse and download open data files from this release in our data catalogue

  • Data guidance

    Learn more about the data files used in this release using our online guidance

  • Download all data (ZIP)

    Download all data available in this release as a compressed ZIP file

Penalty notices

What are penalty notices?

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

The amount payable in 2023/24 was £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. 

The number of penalty notices issued has continued to increase

487,300 penalty notices were issued in 2023/24, up from 398,800 in 2022/23, an increase of 22%. This increase continues the upward trend which started before the pandemic.

Following a general upward trend from 2009/10 to 2012/13, regulations were amended in September 2013 which stated that term time leave may only be granted in exceptional circumstances. This is 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. Further information is in the section headed “About the data in this release”.

Figures for 2020/21 and 2021/22 should be treated with caution when comparing to other years. During these years, attendance at school was heavily disrupted, and for two months in 2020/21 measures were disapplied when schools were not open to all pupils. No data was collected for 2019/20.

9 in 10 penalty notices issued for unauthorised family holidays

The majority of penalty notices, 443,300 (91.0%), were issued for unauthorised family holidays. This is an increase of 87,100 (24%) compared to the previous year.

1,100 penalty notices (0.2%) were issued for being late and the remaining 42,900 (8.8%) were issued for other reasons, increases of 100 (10%) and 1,300 (3%) compared to the previous year, respectively.

Large local variation in number of penalty notices issued

The use of penalty notices varied greatly by local authority, with three local authorities issuing no penalty notices (as in the previous year) and 26 out of 153 local authorities accounting for half of all penalty notices issued. There is also considerable variability in the rate of penalty notices issued (as a proportion of pupil enrolments), from zero to 19.5%.

The region with the highest rate of penalty notices issued was Yorkshire and The Humber, at 10.7%, while the lowest rates of penalty notices issued were in Inner London (3.5%) and Outer London (3.4%).

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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 (opens in a new tab) 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.

Local authorities 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.

Use of attendance case management increased in 2023/24

80,100 cases went through attendance case management in the 2023/24 academic year. Of those, 42% of cases were withdrawn prior to prosecution. In 2022/23 there were 77,100 cases and 51% 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.

The number of parenting contracts increased in 2023/24

14,900 parenting contracts were offered in 2023/24. Of these, 11,200 were accepted (75%). 93 local authorities offered no parenting contracts in 2023/24.

In 2022/23 there were 13,600 parenting contracts offered, of which 10,300 were accepted (76%).

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.

Most local authorities did not grant any parenting orders

40 parenting orders were granted in 2023/24, in 13 local authorities. In 2022/23 there were 30 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.

Most local authorities did not issue any Education Supervision Orders

30 ESOs were issued in 2023/24, in 8 local authorities. In 2022/23 the number of ESOs issued was 46.

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About the data in this release

Further data

Further data at regional and local authority level is available in the underlying data using the options in ‘Explore data and files used in this release’.

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.

Legal cases affecting the penalty notice trends from 2015/16

The changes in trend of the total of penalty notices 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. Many local authorities reporting large increases in penalty notices issued 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’.
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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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