Education Penalty Notices
Overview
Parents and carers have a legal responsibility to ensure that their child receives full-time education.
Unless you can show that you are providing this yourself, you must ensure that your child attends school regularly and on time. You will be committing an offence if your child fails to attend regularly and punctually, and the school has not given permission for the absence or late arrival.
Only your child’s school can authorise absence or late arrival.
A new National Framework for penalty notices for school absence has been introduced and came into effect on 19 August 2024.
The National Framework aims to:
- make penalty notices more effective by ensuring they are only used in cases where they are the most appropriate tool to change behaviour and improve attendance
- prioritise the ‘support first’ approach by expecting support to be used in cases where it is appropriate and using penalty notices in cases where support is not appropriate (for example, a term time holiday) or has not been engaged with
- improve consistency in the use of penalty notices across England by introducing a new national threshold at which they are considered
- improve the deterrent effect of a penalty notice by increasing the amount and introducing a new national limit of 2 penalty notices within a 3-year period to break the cycle of repeat offending.
Penalty notice
A penalty notice offers a parent an alternative to prosecution. It requires the parents to pay an amount for their child's irregular attendance to avoid a court appearance.
In line with the updated National Framework, the first penalty notice issued to the parent for a specific child will be charged at £160 if paid within 28 days, reducing to £80 if paid within 21 days.
Where it is deemed appropriate to issue a second penalty notice to the same parent for the same child, this will be charged at £160 with no reduced rate offered, regardless of when it is paid.
If the situation escalates to a third offense within a 3-year period, A third penalty notice will not be issued. Alternative actions, often including prosecution under Section 444(1) of the Education Act 1996, will be pursued.
A penalty notice will normally be sent by first class post to your home address.
If payment is not received by the 28 days, you may be prosecuted for your child’s absence from school under Section 444 (1) of the Education Act 1996.
Period a penalty notice can be issued for
The single, consistent national threshold for when a penalty notice can be issued is 5 school days (10 sessions) of unauthorised absence within a 10-week rolling period. This can be made up of a combination of any type of unauthorised absence.
Leave during term-time
The law requires that a school’s headteacher should not grant approval for any leave of absence during term-time, including holidays, unless there are exceptional circumstances.
Parents are not entitled to take their children on holiday in term-time. Such holidays can only be taken with the written approval of the headteacher. Each case will be considered on its own merits and the decision of the headteacher is final.
Appealing a penalty notice
There is no right of appeal once a fixed penalty notice has been issued.
We can only withdraw a penalty notice in certain circumstances:
- It should not have been issued (for example, if the child was actually at school).
- It has been issued to the wrong person.
- If it appears to the local authority that it contains material errors.
If you believe that one of these circumstances applies, you should email education.welfare@derby.gov.uk as soon as possible with evidence to support your view. If you wish to make general representations you should contact the issuing school or academy.
Who a parent is
A parent is:
- any natural parent, whether married or not
- any parent who, although they are not a natural parent, has parental responsibility (as defined in the Children Act 1989) for a child or young person
- any person who, although not a natural parent, has care of a child or young person - having care of a child or young person means that a person with whom the child lives and who looks after the child, irrespective of what their relationship is with the child is considered to be a parent in education law.
Parents who are separated
For parents who are separated, we would only request a penalty notice for the parent who has taken the child on holiday. In some cases, parents have not notified the school of the change of circumstance, it is the parent’s responsibility to update the school of any changes in circumstances.