Legal Intervention
As absence is so often a symptom of wider issues a family is facing, we will always work with other local partners to understand the barriers to attendance and provide support. Where that is not successful, or is not engaged with, the law protects students’ right to an education and provides a range of legal interventions to formalise attendance improvement efforts, and where all other avenues have been exhausted, enforce it through prosecuting parents. Attendance legal intervention can only be used for students of compulsory school age and decisions should be made on an individual case by case basis.
The following legal interventions may be utilised to improve attendance:
- Parenting contracts
- Education supervision orders
- Attendance prosecution
- Parenting orders
- Fixed penalty notices
Further details of these can be found in the government guidance “working together to improve school attendance” but a summary of these legal interventions can be found attached.
The attached advice document has been created by St Helens council for those parents / carers facing prosecution for non-school attendance.