Term-time holiday court ruling set to cause confusion, officials warn

Neil Carmichael, Education select committee chairman, has said that parents are likely to be confused after a recent ruling concluded that a parent who had taken his child out of school for a holiday was not liable to pay a fine, due to the child having a good record of attendance otherwise.

In an interview with the BBC, Carmichael said: "I certainly think we need a period of reflection on this matter because this ruling causes a huge amount of confusion.

"Instead of confusion we need clarity - clarity for parents and clarity for the schools, because people will be wondering what to do next given the scale of the change."

The news comes after the government has increased regulations over school leave, meaning head teachers can only be allowed to grant pupils a leave of absence in exceptional circumstances’.

Previously, the rules meant that students could only be allowed time off for ‘special circumstances’. However, critics cautioned that the government needed to be more clear about what defined ‘special circumstances’.

In particular, a number of parents have complained that the cost of going abroad in the school holidays can be up to four times as much as during term time.

Carmichael added: “You'd have to be very careful about defining what you think is a special circumstance. The government will have to think very carefully about this because what we don't want is when the special circumstance happens to be: 'There's a cheap holiday and we'd like to go'."

The government has argued: “Every extra day of school missed can affect a pupil's chance of gaining good GCSEs, which has a lasting effect on their life chances.”