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.