Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 10
10
Deferred
Paragraph: 56
Require legal intervention as last resort, introducing a national framework for consistent attendance fines.
Recommendation
We recommend the Department instruct schools and local authorities to explore methods of support for pupils and families before the use of fines or prosecution, ensuring that legal intervention is a last resort only. The Department should be more explicit about this in its revisions to the guidance ‘Working together to improve school attendance’. These revisions should include a national framework for fines and prosecution, to ensure consistency between local authority use. We reiterate, the Department should legislate for this guidance to be made statutory.
Government Response Summary
The Government states its guidance already promotes a 'support first' approach but will use the inquiry's evidence to inform future regulatory or legislative changes for a national framework on fines, and remains committed to legislating for statutory guidance when parliamentary time allows.
Paragraph Reference:
56
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
The ‘Working together to improve attendance’ guidance is clear that in most cases, local agencies collaborating to provide ‘support first’ is the right approach to tackle attendance problems. The core focus of the guidance is on prevention and early intervention, particularly for absence with complex causes. The guidance is also clear that there are some situations in which support to improve attendance is not appropriate such as an unauthorised holiday in term time. In these cases, and in circumstances where support is not successful, or is not engaged with, it is right that the law protects a pupil’s right to an education. Here, there is a clear role for the use of legal intervention to secure a pupil’s regular attendance. This includes fixed penalty notices which the guidance says explicitly ‘are intended to prevent the need for court action and should only be used where likely to change parental behaviour’. As the inquiry heard, legal intervention is currently used inconsistently across the country, with 22 local authorities accounting for over 50% of all fixed penalty notices issued in 2020–21. To improve consistency, the Department consulted on setting national thresholds for fixed penalty notices in 2022 and published its response in August 2023. That response confirmed the Government’s commitment to improving the consistency of local approaches to enforcement, as part of the drive towards a ‘support first’ approach. The Government welcomes the inquiry’s evidence which will help inform work as it develops, including any future regulatory or legislative changes to establish a national framework for ensuring that local decisions are made in a more consistent way. As noted above, the Government remains committed to legislating to make the guidance statutory, when parliamentary time allows.