What are penalty notices?
Penalty notices are issued to parents for failing to ensure that their child attends school.
The amount payable in 2024/25 was £80 if paid within 21 days of receipt rising to £160 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. Any second notice issued to a parent in respect of the same child in a 3 year rolling period is charged at a standard rate of £160.
The number of penalty notices issued has continued to increase
492,800 penalty notices were issued in 2024/25, up from 487,300 in 2023/24. This represents a small increase of 1% compared to last year and continues the year-on-year upward trend.
A new National Framework for Penalty Notices (opens in new tab) was introduced in 2024/25. This includes a standard threshold when a penalty notice should be considered; previously each local authority set their own policy. Since then some local authorities have had considerable changes in the numbers of penalty notices issued.
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. Further information can be found in the methodology.
More than 9 in 10 penalty notices are issued for unauthorised family holidays
The majority of penalty notices, 459,300 (93%), were issued for unauthorised family holidays. This is an increase of 16,000 (4%) compared to the previous year.
1,400 penalty notices (0.3%) were issued for being late and the remaining 32,100 (7%) were issued for other unauthorised circumstances, an increase of 300 (31%) and decrease of 10,800 (25%) compared to the previous year, respectively.
Geographic variation in rates of penalty notices issued has narrowed but remains high
In 2024/25, the region with the highest rate of penalty notices issued was Yorkshire and The Humber, at 10.3% of pupil enrolments, representing a slight decrease from last year. London was the region with the lowest rate at 3.6%, a slight increase from last year.
Although the rate of penalty notices continued to vary considerably across local authorities, the overall range narrowed this year. In 2023/24 rates ranged from 0% to 19.5%, compared with a smaller range of 0% to 17.1% in 2024/25, the first year of the national framework.