Karen Hawkins, assistant director of Family Action, told CYP Now that the fines are “a blunt instrument for a complex issue that fails to address why children are not attending school”.
Her comments come as the latest school attendance figures reveal that the number of persistent truants in the 2012/13 academic year remained static despite the launch of the Troubled Families scheme and a government crackdown on holiday absences.
Figures from the Department for Education show that in the autumn 2012 and spring 2013 school terms the truancy rate was 4.9 per cent, the same as for the 2011/12 school year. The previous year, the rate had fallen from 7.2 to 4.9 per cent.
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