A British father has won a landmark case at the High Court in London which could have huge implications for families across the UK.
Jon Platt from the Isle of Wight was fined by his local council after taking his daughter out of school during term time for a family holiday to Disney World in Florida last year.
Having refused to pay the £60 fine, which was then doubled, the dispute was taken to the Isle of Wight Magistrates’ Court – which threw the case out back in October.
Mr Platt’s argument had focused on the relevant section of the Education Act (1996), which relates to school attendance, having made the argument that the legislation only requires children to attend on a ‘regular’ basis.
Section 444 of the act makes no reference to what constitutes ‘regular’ attendance other than to say that ‘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’.
The council at the time had made the argument that action was taken based on the ‘appropriate guidelines’, with the decision then taken to appeal to the High Court in order to gain a true definition of what ‘regular attendance’ is.
The main argument from the council was the questioning of whether an absence of seven straight days for a family break constituted a failure to attend on a regular basis.
That came despite Mr Platt’s daughter having an attendance record exceeding 90%.
Following the hearing in the High Court, judges backed the original decision taken by the magistrate that the decision to take his daughter from school to go on holiday didn’t warrant the fine handed out; with the magistrate having not ‘erred in law’ and were right to take into account the ‘wider picture’ of a child’s attendance record across the rest of the academic year.
"If the law required 100 per cent attendance, if the law said your children must attend every single day in order to get a great education, the law would say that - but it does not,” Mr Platt had earlier told the Good Morning Britain TV show.
"We are not arguing on behalf of people whose kids don't go to school, I'm arguing on behalf of people whose kids go to school every single day and maybe once a year they take them out for five days. It does not harm them at all. How do I know? Because my own kids are doing really, really well in school. They never had 100 per cent attendance but they never had less than 93 per cent attendance.
"Paying the fine was an acceptance that I had committed a criminal offence, I was so indifferent to my children's wellbeing that it amounted to a criminal offence. That's just not true - I'm not such an incompetent parent or so indifferent to their wellbeing that I should be criminalised for it."
Mr Platt, who said he was ‘hugely relieved’ by the High Court ruling when speaking afterwards, has spent around £13,000 fighting his cause.
Statistics state that children with an attendance record of more than 90% are more likely to gain five or more A to C GSCEs (or equivalent) than those with a lower attendance record.
Based on those statistics, a child could be absent from school for up to 19 days across the academic year before they drop below the 90% level.