Holidays During School Term Time

The fundamental challenge is that those on both sides of this debate can claim to have the best interests of a child at heart. Attendance is, of course, important, but so are family time and the educational and recreational benefits of a good holiday. We should not be pursuing attendance for attendance’s sake, or pursuing it solely because high attendance might look good in an Ofsted inspection. We need only look at the devastating effects of school closures during covid to see the catastrophic consequences of persistent absenteeism: learning is damaged, safeguarding signs are missed and children miss out on key opportunities to socialise into society. But when we consider just a few days a year for a family holiday for otherwise present children, are we really talking about the same issue? As one teacher who responded to my survey put it:

“Just because a child is physically in the building does not mean they are learning—a child who is burnt out or anxious may gain far more from a few days’ respite with family.”

It is surely true that the parents paying these fines and objecting to feelings of having broken the law are the same parents who are generally law abiding and value their children being in school. The fines are not successfully tackling the national scandal of persistent absenteeism in the wake of covid, and yet they are wreaking havoc for otherwise well-meaning families. Indeed, 487,300 penalty notices for unauthorised absences were issued in the 2023-24 academic year, an increase of 22% on 398,800 in the previous year.

At local level, many local authorities have attempted to adjust processes to improve attendance, with little to no positive impact. In Bradford, the council has issued 11,565 fixed penalty notices this year alone. Views on the issue are certainly not settled. As a serving headteacher who responded to my survey put it:

“There are only 190 school days per year and a huge amount of learning coverage to get through in the National Curriculum. A child taking ‘just’ 10 days leave each year of their statutory education would miss a staggering 25 full weeks of their education—that’s well over half a year’s lost learning time.”

On one level, there is the challenge of how we tackle absenteeism effectively without punishing parents seeking to enrich the lives of their children, and on another there is the challenge of ensuring that that does not have an impact on a child’s education.

Another hugely important area is children with special educational needs and disabilities. As we know, the SEND system is in crisis, for a whole range of reasons. For many SEND families, a family holiday is one of the key opportunities to decompress from the stress, but the busy holiday period is too much for many SEND children to handle. Natalie was very keen to put that point to me when we had our initial discussions before this debate.

For some SEND families, off-peak holidays are not a matter of money or convenience; they are a wellbeing requirement for their child. Why should a child struggling with SEND be denied the same access to a holiday as a non-SEND classmate by the threat of fines being issued to their parent? Sophie, the mother of a 10-year-old recently diagnosed with learning difficulties, told me that her daughter

“thrives and comes out of her shell”

when abroad, saying that the trips are about building confidence and life skills. Another parent, who cares for a child with autism, said that the crowded peak periods are simply impossible for their family to manage and that off-peak breaks are often the only realistic option. It is absolutely true that SEND children have some of the biggest challenges with absenteeism from the classroom, but in the grand scheme of things, are the few days of a family holiday for a child who is generally in school the days that schools and local authorities should be going after, or should other matters be considered?

It is clear that the existing model is broken on a purely practical level. For a parent with multiple children in different schools, the situation becomes even more complex. In my outreach, I heard from a number of families about the nightmare of getting permission for one child to be absent, but not getting it for the other. The parents are then left asking themselves whether to call the whole holiday off or take the financial hit. How do they make sure that one child is not blamed by another for the cancellation of their family holiday? The likelihood of getting permission can vary wildly between schools and local authorities. Government guidance has been issued, but it is clearly being treated as just that.

I want to finish with what I hope might be a solution to help us sidestep the issue that we are considering. Parents should not have to feel that they are battling the state to get the best for their child; they should be able to rely on the state to help them. Academies already possess the power to alter their term dates, provided that they meet the minimum requirement for annual teaching time. I know of a number of schools that have successfully used those powers to provide odd weeks within their school year outside term time. That slight change in term dates creates opportunities for many parents and cleanly sidesteps the whole issue, creating off-peak holiday time that is accessible to families who would otherwise feel that they had to take a term-time holiday. I stress that it does not reduce the overall hours of learning that a child undertakes annually; it merely redistributes them throughout the year. What is more, providing a clear, comprehensive week of holiday outside peak times empowers heads to remain strict about term-time holidays that are taken regardless.

Thirdly, I am concerned about the impact of a change in policy to allow authorised absence for some parents on the attendance of the most vulnerable pupils. We have an attendance crisis in our schools at present; more than 22% of children severely or persistently absent from school. My Committee has been doing some work on school attendance, and we know that persistent and severe absence is a complex problem with a number of contributory factors, including poverty, an increased level of social, emotional and mental health need following the covid-19 pandemic, and the crisis in the SEND system.

School leaders tell us that the pandemic broke the social contract between schools and parents, and that it has often been difficult to repair it. Introducing an entitlement to authorised absence would send entirely the wrong message to families at a time when the whole system should be pulling together to restore trust and confidence and to support children who are struggling to be in school to thrive.

For the most vulnerable children, school is a protective factor. It is where they can get a hot meal—thanks to this Government, they are able to get both a healthy and nutritious breakfast and a hot lunch—can forge positive relationships with trusted adults and can access not only education, but a wider range of enriching extracurricular activities. If we say it is fine for the children of parents who can afford a holiday to skip school for 10 days, what message are we sending about the importance of being in school to the families who may never have the opportunity to go on holiday, but who often encounter significant obstacles in getting their children to school, for a wide range of reasons?

The current challenges of severe and persistent absence demand multiple solutions. Schools must continue to rebuild relationships of trust with parents. The Government’s reforms to SEND and to the curriculum and assessment framework must ensure that school is an exciting, inspiring and engaging place for all children and young people. The child poverty strategy must remove the barriers to school attendance for the poorest pupils.