Reading parents fined more than £20k in a year as children miss school for holidays

The Department for Education says 311 penalty notices were handed to parents in 2016/17. Credit: David Sacks/Getty Images

by Claire Miller

Reading parents coughed up more than £20,000 last year as they were punished for taking their children out of school during term time.

Figures show the number of fines being handed out for unauthorised family holidays rose by 11.1 per cent over 12 months.

Overall there were 311 penalty notices sent by Reading Borough Council between April 2016 and March 2017, up from 280 the year before. That’s the highest number in six years, according to figures from the Department for Education.

Parents had to pay £20,100 in fines, with 265 notices paid within 28 days. The fine is £60 if paid within 21 days, going up to £120 if paid within 22 to 28 days.

However, 31 penalty notices were withdrawn, and there were two prosecutions for non-payment of penalty notices, a decrease from 15 the previous year.

Bracknell Forest Council was the most likely authority to fine parents if their children missed school, with four penalty notices issued for every 100 children.

That works out to be 609 fines over the course of the year, up 7.6 per cent from 566.

West Berkshire saw the only drop locally, down 58.3 per cent in a year from 199 to 83, while Wokingham saw a rise of 21.7 per cent from 346 to 421.

The issue of unauthorised family holiday has been a tricky one for parents and teachers to get their heads around, with several high profile court cases taking place over the last year.

In May 2016 (in Isle of Wight Council v Jon Platt) the High Court supported a local magistrates’ ruling that there was no case to answer when a dad refused to pay a fine for taking his daughter to Disney World in Florida. But less than a year later the Supreme Court unanimously agreed no child should be taken out of school without good reason and clarified that ‘regularly’ means ‘in accordance with the rules prescribed by the school.

Across England, there were 149,321 penalty notices issued during the
2016/17 academic year, however, the total number of fines decreased by 5.4 per cent, the first drop in the number issued in eight years.

Overall, 77.5 per cent of all penalty notices were issued for unauthorised family holiday absence. The second most common reason for a penalty notice being issued was listed as ‘other reasons’.