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Punish truants’ parents - heads
HEAD teachers are requesting more penalty notices are served on Kent parents for booking their family holiday during term time.. While 1,221 parents were fined
nearly £73,260 for taking their chil- dren out of school from September 2016 to July 2017 (down from 3,504 in 2015/16 and 4,726 in ‘14/15), a rul- ing in the Supreme Court is seeing more challenged. It follows a Supreme Court deci-
sion in April that repealed the “90% attendance rule”, introduced fol- lowing a successful challenge by a parentwhododged a fine for taking his daughter away in term time be- cause her attendance record was better than 90%. The latest Supreme Court judgement has removed the 90% attendance threshold Kent County Council said al- though the number of penalty no- tices issued in 2016/17 was lower than previous years, the spirit of the Supreme Court decision is that chil- dren should be in school for 190
days. This has resulted in a recent substantial increase in the number of Penalty Notice requests being made by heads to KCC. In June, KCCreceived 846 requests, while in May itwas 402. KCC spokesman Cllr Roger Gough said: “We believe pupils must attend school regularly in order to make good progress and to benefit fully from education provi- sion. The local authority and the schools provide a wide range of support including the interventions of the Early Help Service for the par- ents who have genuine family is- sues that affect their children’s attendance.” Kent County Council has prose-
cuted 166 cases of unauthorised ab- sence since May 2016 and its attendance rate has improved in the past year to nearly 96%. Last year, 43% of parents paid fines, resulting in total payments of £31,500. Of the 57% of the parents who refused to pay, KCC is taking legal action.
Shernold’s success
A SMALL independent primary school in Maidstone has seen off competition from 1,200 other pupils in the borough to win a “safety in Action” challenge. A total of 38 local schools from
across the county town and wider borough took part in the project but Shernold School emerged as the winners. The event, which was subsidised
by the local authority but organised by the safety training organisation Salus, saw the year six teams quizzed on a number of risk scenar- ios.
These included fire, roads, water
and electrical appliances as well as online safety. There were other topics such as resilience and coping and emer- gency life support. The eventwas held at InvictaPark
Barracks in Maidstone and Sher- nold’s team of 15 pupils came top of the pile by the end of the exercise, earning a special trophy for the Fer- ndown Queen’sAvenue school. Shernold has only 143 pupils on
its roll.
Shernold head teacher Sandra Dinsmorewas “delighted”. She said: "We thought this initia-
tivewas a greatway for our children to learn about some of the dangers they may face as they become more independent and prepare for transi- tion to secondary school. "'Safety in Action'was a great ad-
junct to their day-to-day lessons at school, and we are absolutely de- lighted that our team came out on top."
Salus Training Services provides
a variety of health and safety train- ing courses across diverse sectors.
01622 753073 |
clarkesfurnishers.co.uk Visit us at Sandling Road, Maidstone, ME14 2RF Maidstone August 2017 5
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