Parents who take children out of school may be “shocked” by a new drive to boost attendance, including fines and prosecutions, a leader has warned.

Councillors got around the table to discuss how to close education gaps as new national rules came into force, with parents facing higher fines for unauthorised school absences.

They may receive parenting orders or be taken to court if they go beyond two fines in three years.

Persistent absences have doubled nationally over the last four years, rising to 22% of all children in Stockton in 2022-3.

In the same year, 2.4% of children were missing more than half of their education – 473 secondary and 112 primary school pupils.

The town’s absences in primary schools was lower than national and regional figures, but higher in secondary schools, though lower than the Teesside average.

Attendance is a key focus in a Stockton Council inquiry which has made 17 wide-ranging recommendations to narrow the educational gap for the borough’s children.

The report says pupils fell behind, achieved less, missed important academic, social and emotional learning, lost motivation, and could become lonely and isolated and fall into a “downward spiral” through missing school.

Councillor Lisa Evans, the council’s cabinet member for children and young people, referred to another report on attendance saying: “It’s harsh for parents who want to take their children out during term-time, but it’s exactly what we need to be doing, and we’re so committed to doing it.

"We need to look a little bit more deeply on the reasons for non-attendance that are not holidays.

“Our attendance strategy that’s going to come through, I would say it’s going to be a shock for some parents where we have a three-year rolling period and we look at attendance and school holidays.

“We need a national strategy. It’s not just Stockton that’s struggling with attendance, it’s every local authority, and we need to do something on that and we need national buy-in,” she told a children and young people select committee meeting.

“We say taking holidays in term-time is cheaper, so we need a shift on that. I’m not sure we’re going to get it, however our parents are going to be fined and ultimately taken to court on this. So we need to try and develop something nationally for them.”

She said non-attendance was over-reported in Stockton: “I think we over-report actually, which makes our figures higher. We’re very stringent on attendance so we do report really, really well. Not all local authorities do that.

“You miss register, you’re absent, but you might come in five minutes after register. It’s because we’re on the ball with it.

“What we’ve also looked at is deprivation and why children are late. We really need to be mindful some of our students cannot get in to school on time because their parents don’t have a car, they don’t have the bus fare, they need to walk.

“We’re trying to drill down. They haven’t had breakfast, some of them, so we’ve got amazing schools that do breakfast clubs.

“Some children in Stockton go to school hungry and we can’t let that happen. We’ve tried to address that and thankfully we’ve got a lot of schools that are addressing that too.”

Vanessa Housley, head of service, education and inclusion, said: “I think we’d agree that the focus on communication and attendance has been absolutely on point. It’s where we really need to invest our energies to make an impact in narrowing the gap.

“We have to keep the momentum up in narrowing the gap for our children and young people in this borough. Having got these recommendations we absolutely need to drive them forward for action and impact.

“We’re helping those school leaders try and fix the big issues that they really want to fix so we’re on the same page. Crucially, attendance is one of those.

“We’re going into schools and hearing similar messages of ‘we are really not happy with attendance figures, who would be?’ We’re trying to think what more can we do because we’re scratching our heads right now.”

Asked about findings that sanctions and consequences were not strongly linked to improving attendance, and whether she foresaw changes to policies enforced these, she said they wanted to develop approaches with leaders which would make an impact. She said: “That’s the way we want to approach this, to win hearts and minds across the borough.”

She said they had launched a toolkit or “one stop shop” for school leaders, staff and governors: “It’s supporting them with a really hot issue, it will help them self-evaluate more tightly and plan for improvement more precisely.”

Councillor Paul Rowling praised the report as a “fantastic piece of work” but said parts were vague and asked how progress could be measured and monitored. He said: “There’s still too many vulnerable kids that aren’t getting the deal they should be. And the system to a certain extent is failing them.”

Ms Housley suggested bringing leaders in to explain actions they had taken and impact they were seeing: “We’ve never done this before, but we welcome that. We’re not complacent and we’re up for doing new and different things because we need new and different outcomes.”

Cllr Evans added: “I’m very confident that our schools are on board with this. I think our schools are bought into this strategy and they totally agree with us on it.

“I think this is actually ground-breaking. We’ve written to the Bridget Phillipson, the new Education Secretary, and other people because we think this can be rolled out across the country.”

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She said she acknowledged the challenges: “I’m really proud of our education service. They’re amazing.

“We think this is ground-breaking but I would like to see the results in Stockton.

"Let’s come back in three or six (months) to make sure it’s making a difference.”