Section 444(1) of the Education Act 1996 ('the Act') provides that if a child of compulsory school age who is a registered pupil at a school fails to attend regularly at the school, his parent is guilty of an offence.
Mr Platt sought permission from his daughter's school to remove her during term-time for a holiday. The Headteacher refused the request, the father took her on holiday anyway, causing her to miss seven school days. Her attendance prior to this had been 90.3%.
Mr Platt was issued with a penalty notice which he refused to pay and was subsequently prosecuted in the Isle of Wight Magistrates Court. The Magistrates found that there was no case to answer, taking into account his daughter's attendance records outside of the holiday period.
By the time the matter reached the Supreme Court, the Court had to decide the meaning of 'fails to attend regularly' - it having three possible meanings:
The Supreme Court unanimously held that 'regularly' in this context means 'in accordance with the rules prescribed by the school'.
On a strict interpretation, any failure to attend in accordance with the school rules will amount to a failure to attend regularly, which means that a criminal offence has been committed, unless one of the four statutory defences applies. This means that an offence will be committed in cases of:
It is suggested that local authorities will now need to revisit their Codes of Conduct required under the Education (Penalty Notices) (England) Regulations 2007, in consultation with all schools and academies in their administrative area to ensure that that sensible and consistent prosecution policies are established, so that technical and minor breaches do not lead to criminal prosecution as a matter of course.
The main judge in the case - Lady Hale - said in relation to this "this can involve the use of fixed penalty notices, which recognise that a person should not have behaved in this way but spare him a criminal conviction. If such cases are prosecuted, the court can deal with them by an absolute or conditional discharge if appropriate".
Lady Hale, also somewhat unusually provided clear policy reasons for the judgement, echoing the perspective of many educationalists in this controversial area:
"It is not just that there is a clear statistical link between school attendance and educational achievement. It is more the disruptive effect of unauthorised absences. These disrupt the education of the individual child. Work missed has to be made up, requiring extra work by the teacher who has already covered and marked this subject matter with the other pupils. Having to make up for one pupil’s absence may also disrupt the work of other pupils. Group learning will be diminished by the absence of individual members of the group. Most of all, if one pupil can be taken out whenever it suits the parent, then so can others. Different pupils may be taken out at different times, thus increasing the disruptive effect exponentially."