Legal Update: School attendance and holidays

At the start of April, the Supreme Court ruled in a high-profile case on the issue of taking a child out of school during term time. A year previously, Jon Platt took his youngest daughter out of school for seven days to go on a family holiday to Disneyland Florida during term time without permission. He was fined as a result. Having refused to pay the fine, Mr Platt won his case at Isle of Wight Magistrates Court, which held that he had "no case to answer" because of his daughter's high attendance in school. However, the case ended up in the Supreme Court, which considered whether or not Platt committed an offence by failing to ensure that his daughter "attended school regularly", as required by section 444(1) of the 1996 Education Act. The court overturned the Isle of Wight decision, ruling that "regularly" did not mean "evenly spaced" or "sufficiently often" but instead "in accordance with the attendance rules."