The latest attendance figures from the Department for Education (DfE, 2025) show that for the autumn term 2024, attendance in primary schools was 94.8% with an 5.2% absence rate.
Of this, 3.8% of sessions missed were authorised and 1.4% were unauthorised. This compares to the autumn term in 2023 when absence was at 5.3% with 1.5% unauthorised.
When it comes to persistent absence – students who missed 10% or more of school sessions – this stood at 15.4% in autumn 2023 meaning that the situation has worsened slightly with persistent absence of 15.8% in autumn 2024.
This year the government has raised the fines for non-attendance to £80 (it used to be £60). The new approach means that each parent will only get up to two fines for the same child in a three-year period – but if they get a second fine in three years it will be at £160. If parents do not pay the fine in 28 days they may be taken to court for keeping their child out of school (DfE, 2024).
However, it is unclear whether the threat of increased fines is behind the slight improvement in unauthorised absence.
Figures published by the DfE on Thursday (January 30) show that during the 2023/24 academic year (when fines were still £60) there was a notable rise in the number of fines being issued by local authorities.
There were 487,344 penalty notices issued for unauthorised absence in the 2023/24 academic year, an increase of 22% from 398,800 in the previous year. This increase continues an upward trend which started before the pandemic.
Of these, 443,322 (91%) were due to unauthorised family holidays and 1,100 (0.2%) were for being late.
The DfE's statistical notice notes: "The use of penalty notices varied greatly by local authority, with three local authorities issuing no penalty notices and 26 out of 153 local authorities accounting for half of all penalty notices issued. The region with the highest rate of penalty notices issued was Yorkshire and The Humber, at 10.7%, while the lowest rates of penalty notices issued were in Inner London (3.5%) and Outer London (3.4%)."
Responding to the attendance figures this week, Paul Whiteman, general secretary at the National Association of School Leaders, praised the hard work of school leaders in bringing unauthorised absence down year-on-year.
However, he said that parental fines are a “blunt tool” that doesn’t “get to the root causes of non-attendance”. Instead, he urged the government to invest in early support in order to tackle the causes of absence.
He continued: “We did not believe that increasing these fines would shift the dial in any meaningful way. The last government failed to invest anything like enough in early support for families facing challenges in their lives including poverty and mental health.
“It will be vital that the new administration builds on measures like its register of children not in school by investing more in services like social care and children’s mental health – and important that its child poverty taskforce leads to tangible action.”
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, added: School leaders take no pleasure in parents being fined, but must have clear, consistent policies in place that emphasise the importance of attendance.
“There is a longstanding issue of exorbitant prices being charged by the travel industry during school holiday periods. We can understand why some parents want to take holidays at other times of year as this may be the only way it is affordable, even with the threat of a fine. However, we must do something to reverse the trend of a growing number of pupils missing out on a week or more of school. This is damaging to their education as well as disruptive for their class and teachers, who must then spend time helping them catch up on work they have missed.
“There is no simple resolution to this issue, but we do think it is time for the government to explore ways in which they could restrain travel firms from raising their prices during school holidays. We cannot see how this problem can be solved another way.”
- DfE: School attendance and absence, September 2024: www.gov.uk/school-attendance-absence/legal-action-to-enforce-school-attendance
- DfE: Week 2: Pupil attendance in schools, January 2025: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-attendance-in-schools/2025-week-2
- DfE: Academic year 2023/24: Parental responsibility measures, January 2025: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/parental-responsibility-measures/2023-24