Penalty Notice Fines for School Attendance Consultation 2024

This consultation took place from 28 June to 29 July 2024.

What are penalty notices for school attendance?

Penalty Notices are an established school attendance enforcement strategy that are used by Local Authorities nationwide. They are designed as a simple, cost-effective tool to address low level unauthorised absence from school.

Regular attendance at school is extremely important to children's achievement, wellbeing, and wider development. Reducing absence is the Government’s number one priority and from September 2024, new regulations for schools come into force in the Government’s next stage of their attendance drive.

This consultation proposes to continue the administration of the Penalty Notice process in line with the new national framework, and the government attendance regulation changes and statutory attendance guidance. As a result of these national changes, we have fully revised our local code of conduct to support the business-as-usual operating model for issuing Penalty Notices for school absence in Bristol.

What is changing?

On 19 August 2024 the law will change. These Regulations amend the Education (Penalty Notices) (England) Regulations 2007 (S.I. 2007/1867).

The revised attendance guidance is available now and will be statutory from August 2024: Working together to improve school attendance.

We have summarised the new national framework elements and elements for local discretion below.

Summary of the new national framework elements

These national framework elements are decided by central government, and are outside of the scope of this consultation.

• National threshold (improving the consistency in the use of penalty notices across England) – 10 sessions of unauthorised absence in a rolling 10-school week period.
• Where the Penalty Notice national threshold is met (prioritising the support first approach) – in each individual case, the school must consider if a Penalty Notice is appropriate, or support should be provided, or a Notice to Improve issued, or other legal interventions
• National fine amounts increase (improving the deterrent effect of a penalty notice) – First fine, £80 if paid within 21 days rising to £160 if paid between 22-28 days.
• National fine amount escalation (improving the deterrent effect of a penalty notice) - For a second Penalty Notice issued within a 3-year rolling period to the same parent in respect of the same child, the Penalty Notice is £160.00 if paid within 28 days. There is no option for this second offence to be reduced to the lower rate of £80.
• National fine cap (improving the deterrent effect of a penalty notice) - A maximum of two fines for the same parent and same child in a rolling three years. After which, alternative action should be taken instead, such as prosecution.
• Cross-border checks (improving the deterrent effect of a penalty notice) – cases where a pupil has moved school or local authority area within the three rolling year period will be subject to local authority cross-border checks to see if a Penalty Notice (or notices) have been issued in the previous 3 years.

Elements for local discretion

You can read the full local code of conduct for issuing Penalty Notices for school absence and excluded pupils.

Bristol City Council has control over these elements, and they are in scope of this consultation.

• Notice to Improve warning letter replaces the previously locally agreed penalty notice warning letter.
• Bristol City Council will provide its schools with a Notice to Improve warning letter template for use that contains the recommended content outlined in the National Framework.
• Bristol City Council will undertake cross-border checks on behalf of its schools for cases where a pupil has moved school or local authority area within the three rolling year period. This is to ascertain whether a Penalty Notice (or notices) have already been issued to determine if national fine amount escalation limit or cap has been reached.