The Sunday Times February 13, 2022 13
NEWS
Cate Blanchett, 52, Australian star of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Don’t
Look Up, was presented with the Spanish Film Academy’s first International
Goya award in Valencia for helping cinema to “ bring people together”CATE THE GREAT
LLUIS GENE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGESNicola Taylor
with husband
Mark, who died in
2020, and
daughter Lilyissued no penalties in 2020-21 while oth-
ers issued more than 1,500. Lancashire,
Essex, Bradford and Nottinghamshire
issued the most up to December 2021,
while Dorset, and Brent and Kensington
in London issued none. A spring white
paper is expected to spell out how the
charges must be applied by all schools.
Susannah Lewis, a mother of five from
Islington, north London, has received a
letter from St Mary Magdalene Academy
drawing her attention to the school’s pol-
icy that she would be fined £60 unless her
son, Benedict, 14, turned up to lessons.
Apart from the first day of term in Sep-
tember, he has not attended this aca-
demic year. He started displaying what
the school nurse called “emotionally
based school avoidance” after the pan-
demic started. Lewis said: “In the week
he sleeps in the day and then he stays up
all night and goes to bed at seven the fol-
lowing morning and we cannot get him
up. At weekends he is fine.
“Pre-March 2020 he had 97 per cent
attendance and was in the top sets. He
was Mr Popular and he loved school. Now
I have letters saying his attendance is
2 per cent and warning of sanctions ... Ican pay a fine but that does not help my
child.” St Mary Magdalene Academy said
it was following national guidance. It said
it “supported children... to encourage
regular attendance which is so important
to both happiness and success”.
If children still do not return or parents
refuse to pay, councils can take them to
court, where they can be fined £2,500 or
jailed for three months. Schools can refer
families to social services.
Casper Peace, now 12, had a good
attendance record at primary school. He
was due to start at Portsmouth Academy
in September 2020 but has not been for
more than 18 months. His mother, April,
who is paying for Casper to have online
private tuition, said he had been made
anxious by the Covid-related death last
year of Jorja Halliday, 15, a pupil at the
school. “He says he wants to wait till it is
safe to go back to school till the pandemic
is over,” she said.
Last month she was due to attend
court for failing to ensure Casper’s
attendance but the case was adjourned.
She plans to plead not guilty. “Caspar has
been vaccinated — he has had one jab but
he is still worried. He is mildly autisticParents of Covid ‘ghost’
pupils hit with fines
Nicola Taylor was fined £60 last month
because her daughter, Lily, like thou-
sands of other pupils in the pandemic,
has not returned to school.
Before March 2020, Lily, now 15, was
rarely absent from class, but her father,
Mark, died at the start of the pandemic
and her confidence was sapped by suc-
cessive lockdowns. She started refusing
to attend her Church of England second-
ary school in West Sussex.
Taylor, 44, whose two other children
attend lessons, said: “I spent three hours
this morning trying to get Lily into
school. She wants to go but she can’t. I
feel as if I am being punished for some-
thing totally out of my control.”
She is among a number of parents
whose children once had excellent
attendance but are now off school. On
January 20, a record one million pupils in
England — one in eight — were marked
absent on school registers. Only 415,
were for Covid-related reasons. Last
week there were nearly 900,000 chil-
dren off school for any reason, according
to official figures.
Average attendance has dropped in
secondary schools from 95 per cent, pre-
pandemic, to 87 per cent. About 100,
“ghost” children have dropped off school
rolls. Some are thought to be at risk of
county lines drug crime or abuse from
parents. But many have just got out of the
habit of going to school and parents do
not know how to get them back.
Ministers, alarmed at how many pupils
are absent, have sanctioned head teach-
ers to refer families to councils that can
levy fixed penalty notices to try to boost
attendance. The £60 fine per parent, ris-
ing to £120 if not paid within 21 days, was
introduced in 2013 by Michael Gove, then
the education secretary, to stop parents
taking cheap term-time holidays.
The government lifted a suspension on
the penalties at the end of the second
lockdown in March last year. A total of
45,809 penalty charges were issued by
councils up to December. No data on
fines was published by the Department
for Education for 2019-20. Some councilsSian Griffiths and Anna LombardiSanctions are being levied after absenteeism surged but charities say families need help
and at one point got obsessed with the
data, how many people have died, how
many children have got long Covid. Most
of his friends have had Covid.”
The academy said: “Our highest prior-
ity is keeping students and staff at the
school as safe as possible. Attendance at
school is mandatory so that children can
continue to receive an excellent educa-
tion. It is right that action is taken against
parents who deny their children the right
to be educated.”
Square Peg, an organisation for chil-
dren who struggle with school, has
22,000 members and the number is ris-
ing at the rate of 1,000 a month. Ellie Cos-
tello, Square Peg’s director, said a “zero-
tolerance, tough love” approach to fining
parents was “draconian”. She added:
“These are loving families whose chil-
dren have been derailed by the pandemic
and they need help and support. There
are one million absences and 40 per cent
have no reason recorded on the register.”
A report from the chief inspector of
schools, Amanda Spielman, last week
found one in five schools had higher than
normal absence rates. In an effort to
boost attendance some schools have
given alarm clocks to families or have
organised wake-up phone calls.
Simon Kidwell, head of Hartford
Manor Primary School in Cheshire,
warned that families threatened with
fines and prosecutions might withdraw
their child from the state system and say
they will teach them at home. “In this
school, the carrot works better than the
stick.” He has offered children part-time
timetables to ease them back into school.
It is an approach welcomed by James
Arkell, a psychiatrist. “It is very difficult
for children,” he said. “Offices are begin-
ning to adapt and work in a hybrid way. I
hope that schools can be creative and
flexible too. Let the children do short
days at school and gradually build up to a
full timetable.”
@siangriffithsDIGITAL
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