Outspoken: Cllr Reg Owens

AT THURSDAY’S children and families overview and scrutiny meeting, members discussed issuing penalty notices for unauthorised school absences. 

A number of councillors had questions on the subject. Cllr Reg Owens was the most outspoken of the committee on the subject and raised a number of questions. He said: “This system would have been completely unnecessary if, a few years ago, parents of particularly bad attending children were prosecuted. To pile on a £60 fine is just going to add to the misery to some of these families. The decision on issuing a notice should be made by a three-person committee from this committee but we should have a say as members on whether or not that fine should be issued.”

Council officer Jake Morgan added: “That may require a constitutional change. We would be better off in providing detailing scrutiny on fines that have been issued. We are not envisaging vast numbers of fines being issued. This is part of a whole range of issues that are designed to improve attendance. This system is relatively untested and how we implement it is all-important. We encourage people to have dialogue with us before-hand. If a child has two weeks away in every school year, that’s six months they will have missed, that is quite significant.”

Cllr Owens responded: “We’re presuming that the biggest reason for low attendance is kids being taken out of school. Some parents aren’t strong enough to enforce their child to go to school. This is a terrible piece of legislation and to treat it as a doubleyellow line fine is ridiculous.” Discussions then turned to military personnel with Cllr Owens asking: “Why is it an exception for military personnel, why can’t the mother take the child out on holiday?” Jake Morgan replied: “It wouldn’t be appropriate to draw a list of circumstances. This could be one of the scenarios and it would be up to us to decide”.

Cllr Guy Woodham said: “Schools may receive complaints about penalties being issued; is there any guidance on how schools can cope with this?” The committee also discussed discretions that may be given in some cases. Cllr Steve Yelland added: “I’m glad we’re going to show a little bit of discretion in various circumstances”. Cllr Rhys Sinnett added: “Discretion can be good but we have to have some consistency. We are entering in to a mine field and I hope the document gives fairly robust advice.”

Lastly, Cllr Owens asked: “If a parent says that their child is ill, how can you verify that? Something like this will knock down attendance.” Assistant leader for behaviour and attendance, Cara Huggins, said: “There may be some exceptional circumstances, we cannot always verify an illness. We can ask for GP appointment cards and for parents to ring in or provide medical evidence.” Speaking after the meeting Cllr Pat Davies said: “It’s going to be quite a controversial thing and Reg was quite right really, there are some families who have behaviour issues with their children and they try their best to do things with their children.

When I was in school, you called it truant then, they didn’t go to school and there will always be those types of children and that’s for the authority to work with those families and try and help and support to encourage and engage those young people to come to school. I think that’s where the issue may be, not so much middle class families taking their children out on holiday to Spain for a fortnight, that’s one issue but families that are struggling and struggling with young people trying to get them into to school that’s another issue.”