Following a series of updates from the DfE (2024, 2025), there has been further updates around statutory guidance for schools, parents and carers.
The latest government guidance can be found here: Working Together to Improve School Attendance 2026.
Here is a quick summary of some of the updates:
- Rules around ensuring registers are taken at the same time of the day for all pupils. For us, this is at 08:45 for the morning session and 13:00 for our afternoon session.
- Further expectations on schools to analyse and monitor absence trends and proactively support pupils/families when potential patterns are noticed
- Further tightening around granting leaves of absence in “exceptional circumstances”:
- These must be made in advance of the leave of absence
- The DfE does not deem a leave of absence for a holiday, leisure or recreation as exceptional.
- Leave of absence should not be granted to participate in any form of protest.
- Further clarification around issuing penalty notices
- The national threshold for issuing a penalty notice is 10 sessions (note: 1 day = 2 sessions) within a rolling 10 school week period. This could include, as examples, but is not limited to…
- 5 days for a family holiday
- 10 arrivals in morning after registers have closed (after 09:15)
The school’s policy on attendance can be found here: Attendance Policy – Aut ’26