School absence fines

So each school day is 2 sessions am and pm and the child must generally be in school when the register is taken to be counted as in attendance, usually at 9am and 1pm.
So if you miss a day of school you miss 2 sessions.
If you take your child out of school for a week for a family holiday they miss 10 sessions and each parent, whether they are together or not, will then get a fine of £80 each for that week.
If you only miss one day/2 sessions, that essentially sets off a sort of calendar stop watch that if they then miss 8 more sessions within 10 weeks of the first missed day, then you both get fined. This is to hit families who regularly don't rock up on a Monday morning for instance or take Fridays off for long weekends.
There is also a 3 year rolling period where by if you are filled a second time the amount you're fined is double and if you take a third week within 3 years it will likely go straight to court with the local authority

Although the websites all say this is at headteachers discretion, that was massively stripped back and heads really have to justify to governors and local authorities why they authorise any they do. The only reasons I've heard of, other than illness, is weddings or a death in the immediate family requiring travel

thankyou, so my child was off 20-22nd April last week so 3days so 6sessions. so the 10week rolling will now open from 20th April is that right? so if he has 2more days unauthorised within this 10week period we could then get fined? i didnt realise how strict all of this was 🙈. My son is 5 so all new to me now. x

Yep that's exactly it. It got a lot tougher about a year ago as a way to try and reduce persistent absence, although there is still very little that actually helps families with children that struggle going to school. I guess they focused on an easy win with families that take holidays trying to save money. A lot of people find it's still cheaper to take the holiday in term time and just factor the fine in to the holiday budgeting though. The fact that both parents get fined individually seemed weird to me and not all families realise they actually get fined twice.

yeah i get it, difficult for everybody isnt it, understand they want to crack down but also frustrating, i dont think it puts many off really does it, weve actually got a holiday booked end sept for 2weeks so i guess will just factor in the fine with that one, he does have good attendance, rarely poorly etc so will just have to start planning holidays more accordingly 🙈etc, does illness get factored into the absences or is it just unauthorised ones?

Illnesses are generally authorised absences. It’s usually 5 consecutive days in one sitting that would trigger a fine

Illness shouldn't count

Hopefully your head only puts the one holiday down as one fine. Some would be a*holes and put the second week as a second set of unauthorised absences and trigger the second set of fines, also leaving you at the mercy of potentially a third and prosecution if you did another week within 3 years