A gentleman living on the Isle of Wight took his school-age daughter on holiday to Florida in term time. The child’s absence from school was noted…
The Local Education Authority issued him with a fixed-penalty notice for £60, for failing to ensure that his child attended school regularly. He refused to pay this ‘penalty’ (a bureaucratic alternative to prosecution). The ‘fine’ was doubled (by the bureaucrats) to £120, he refused to pay, so he was summonsed to the Magistrates’ Court by the authority to face a charge under Section 444 of the Education Act 1996 (from John Major’s time).
Sure enough, he argued, my daughter wasn’t in school, big deal. The offence was not made out. Here is the wording in question.
Offence: failure to secure regular attendance at school of registered pupil.
(1)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.
So, for those (many) parents harassed, threatened and fined by bureaucrats, they have been acting as if the law required total attendance at school.
The rule of law has prevailed, the offence was not made out, on the prosecution’s case, the case failed. What troubles me is that I find that, in England in 2015, refreshing.
But as Mrs Thatcher once said ‘Just rejoice at that news!‘.