More parents fined as school look to prevent children missing school in England

As reported by the BBC News, approximately 1.8m children missed over 10% of the school autumn term

During the COVID pandemic, the number of non-attendance fines handed out dropped, with lockdowns causing many children to begin learning at home.

To tackle this, parents have been fined £3.7m so far this year.

Year 10 pupil Olivia attends City Academy in Middlesbrough, which six years ago had the worst attendance record of any school in north-east England.

Olivia missed every other day of school at her lowest point in the last two years. “I didn’t want to see anyone, I didn’t want to talk,” said she said.

“I was in such a negative mindset – I didn’t care about school, I didn’t care about my grades.”

The school’s attendance is now above to the national average.

At nine in the morning, staff at the school have been working their way through a list of phone numbers of parents of pupils who haven’t arrived.

For some families, there are financial barriers, with one pupil messaging to say they don’t have trousers to wear to school. This has been helped by the implementation of a uniform bank in the school, but problems remain.

Katie Coates, a staff member at the City Academy, said: “Some parents can’t afford the dinner money and it’s cheaper to keep them at home.”

Parents with persistently absent children will get a £60 fixed penalty notice. This rises to £120 if it is not paid within weeks.

Between 2018-19, before the pandemic, more than 272,000 fines with a total value of £14m were issued to parents in England for their children’s non-attendance. This has since risen dramatically.