School Attendance Fines: The National Penalty Notice Framework

Taking a child out of school without authorisation, most commonly for a term-time holiday, can lead to a fixed penalty notice under a single national framework that applies across England. This guide sets out how the system works, what it costs, and where the criminal offence sits behind it.

The Underlying Criminal Offence

Behind the penalty notice system sits a criminal offence under the Education Act 1996.

Section 444(1) makes it an offence for a parent to fail to secure their child's regular attendance at school where the child is a registered pupil. On conviction, the maximum fine is level 3 on the standard scale, currently £1,000.

Section 444(1A) creates a more serious, "aggravated" version of the offence, applying where the parent knows their child is failing to attend regularly and fails to take reasonable steps to secure attendance. This carries a higher maximum fine of level 4, £2,500, and/or up to 3 months' imprisonment.

In practice, most cases involving unauthorised absence are dealt with through the penalty notice system described below, with prosecution under section 444 reserved for more serious or repeated non-compliance, or used where the penalty notice route has been exhausted.

The National Penalty Notice Framework

Penalty notices for unauthorised school absence used to vary between local authorities. Under the Department for Education's "Working together to improve school attendance" guidance, a single national framework took effect from 19 August 2024, standardising the amounts and the rules across England.

How much a penalty notice costs

• First penalty notice: £160, reduced to £80 if paid within 21 days of the notice being issued (payment can generally still be made up to 28 days at the higher £160 rate).
• Second penalty notice, issued to the same parent for the same child within a rolling 3-year period: a flat £160, with no reduced rate for early payment.
• Third or later occasion within that same 3-year period: no further penalty notice can be issued. Instead, the local authority is expected to consider prosecution under section 444.

The 2-notice cap

Each parent can be issued a maximum of 2 penalty notices per child within a rolling 3-year period. This cap is deliberately designed to stop penalty notices being used indefinitely as a repeat, low-level enforcement tool, and to push genuinely persistent non-attendance toward the courts instead.

The threshold for a notice to even be considered

A penalty notice cannot be issued for any absence at all. The national framework sets a consistent threshold: a notice should be considered once a child has 10 sessions (roughly 5 school days) of unauthorised absence within a rolling 10-school-week period. A school day is normally counted as two sessions, morning and afternoon, which is why the guidance expresses the threshold in sessions rather than days.

Term-time holidays are the guidance's clearest and most commonly cited example of the kind of absence that, once it pushes a child over that threshold, would normally lead to a penalty notice being considered, since a family holiday during term time is not normally authorised by the school.

Reaching the threshold does not make a penalty notice automatic in every case. A head teacher decides, case by case, whether the absence should be authorised in the first place, and the local authority (or the school, where it has been given that responsibility locally) then decides whether to issue a notice once unauthorised absence crosses the threshold. Other circumstances, such as a genuine medical emergency that a school has simply not yet had the paperwork to authorise, are handled on their facts rather than triggering an automatic fine the moment the session count is reached.

Who Issues a Penalty Notice, and to Whom

Penalty notices are issued to each parent individually, not to a household as a whole. Where two parents are both responsible for a child and both knew about an unauthorised absence, each parent can, in principle, receive a separate notice, and each is then tracked separately against their own 2-notice cap for that child. "Parent" for these purposes is given the same wide meaning used elsewhere in education law, covering a natural parent and anyone else who has parental responsibility for, or day-to-day care of, the child.

The notice itself is typically issued either by the school (where the local authority has delegated that function) or directly by the local authority's attendance or education welfare team. It sets out the amount due, the two payment windows described above, and the consequence of non-payment, which is referral toward prosecution rather than an escalating series of further fines once the 2-notice cap for that child has been used up.

The Separate Exclusion-Period Penalty

There is a distinct penalty that has nothing to do with the ordinary attendance threshold above. If a child is found in a public place during school hours in the first 5 school days of a fixed-period exclusion, without a reasonable justification, a penalty notice can be issued for that specific breach. This penalty is £120, reduced to £60 if paid within 21 days.

This exclusion-period penalty is a separate mechanism and does not count toward the 2-notice cap described above for ordinary unauthorised absence. A parent could, in principle, receive this penalty and also separately be within their 2-notice allowance for unrelated unauthorised absence.

What Happens If You Don't Pay

If a penalty notice is not paid within the relevant window, the local authority can prosecute under section 444 instead of pursuing the fixed penalty. This is also the automatic route once the 2-notice cap has been reached and a third qualifying absence occurs, since no further notice is available at that point.

Scotland and Northern Ireland Run Different Systems

Section 444 of the Education Act 1996, and the national penalty notice framework described above, apply in England (and, for the underlying offence, more broadly across the education system that Act covers) but do not operate identically across the whole UK. Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own separate legal frameworks for enforcing school attendance, with their own procedures, thresholds and figures that are materially different from the English penalty notice system described here. Anyone dealing with a school attendance issue in Scotland or Northern Ireland should check the equivalent local authority or education body's guidance directly rather than assume the English figures apply.

This guide summarises the current national framework in general terms and is not a substitute for advice on an individual case. Schools and local authorities retain discretion in how they apply the framework, and figures and thresholds can be updated by the Department for Education. For a specific attendance issue, contact the school or local authority directly. See the wider UK Everyday Law hub for related guides.