Parents who were facing prosecution for taking their children out of school during term time have had their cases thrown out of court in a landmark ruling.
Two couples were put on trial after council welfare officers in Swindon, Wiltshire accused them of failing to secure regular attendance for their children because they had pulled the youngsters out of class.
According to DailyMail’s story, however, magistrates have now said the case cannot proceed because there is no legal benchmark for what constitutes ‘persistent’ absence.
The ruling could cast doubt on many similar prosecutions being pursued against parents across the country.
The first couple’s child, who is of secondary school age, was pulled out of class for a five-day holiday in October last year without written permission, the court heard. As a result, the pupil attended 92.96 per cent of classes between September 2 and December 18 2015. But Jenny Logan, Swindon Borough Council’s senior education welfare officer, argued that the student’s attendance was actually just 86.84 per cent, according to the Swindon Advertiser. She said the academic year is divided into six terms, with the first running from September to October, when the holiday fell. As a result the pupil’s attendance for that term was below the 90 per cent benchmark advised by the government. The child’s school had set a 93 per cent mark for an entire year. Robert Morgan-Jones, prosecuting on behalf of the council, told Swindon Magistrates’ Court on Friday that neither of these requirements are written in law.
Section 444 of the Education Act 1996 states: ‘If a child of compulsory school age who is a registered pupil at a school fails to attend regularly at the school, his parent is guilty of an offence.’
There are a number of exemptions to the rule – for example, pupils are allowed to miss school in order to observe religious holidays.
However, in 2013 the Government told headteachers they could no longer authorise short-term absences for pupils to go on family holidays, leading to a flood of complaints by parents who must pay inflated prices to go away at peak times.
In this case, the court heard that although the government had advised a benchmark of 90 per cent attendance, this was not written into law.
Magistrates also ruled that although Swindon Borough Council had worked out the attendance records based on a six-week term, the period of absence should have been September to December of that year.
Currently, courts can issue a fine of £2,500 or a jail sentence of up to three months to the parents of children who skip school.
