Deputies reject proposal to fine parents of absent schoolchildren
EDUCATION’s proposal to fine parents for taking their children out of school was labelled ‘authoritarian’ and roundly rejected by deputies yesterday.
The committee wanted to include the idea in its new Education Law. It was later forced into withdrawing all its proposals after parental fines had become the last in a string of heavy defeats on key issues.
Deputy Aidan Matthews led the challenge against fining parents. He criticised it as a flawed version of ‘tough love’ against parents who had the ‘temerity’ to challenge compulsory school attendance.
He said fines in the UK had done nothing to discourage absenteeism but had had a hugely detrimental effect on some families.
He told the Assembly that travel could be twice as expensive during school holidays and that some parents in the UK now simply factored school fines into their holiday budgets.
Deputy Matthews’ amendment was approved by 25 votes to 11 with one abstention.
Deputy David De Lisle, who seconded the amendment, claimed that fines in the UK had not worked, and had led to calls for judicial review for allegedly breaching rights to a family life.
But Education member Sue Aldwell said fines would be a helpful additional tool for the committee against parents who placed little significance on their children’s education.
Deputy Lester Queripel said he was ‘shocked and disappointed’ when he first read the suggestion of fines in ESC’s policy letter.
He claimed that imposing a fine on parents who might have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to take their children on holiday during term time was as draconian as bringing back the cane or the birch.
He also questioned whether parents who could afford to go on holiday would be deterred by a fine for taking their children out of school.
ESC president Andrea Dudley-Owen said fines would not be introduced by the current committee even if the idea was approved by the States.
But it would allow a future committee to go to the States with more detailed arguments and proposals for including the measure in the new law. She said there was some evidence of unjustified absence in States schools.
Deputy Dudley-Owen said a lot of what had been said in debate did not accurately reflect what was happening in local schools.
