Pupil Not Attending
Under certain circumstances parents may be penalised if their child is absent from school. If the child is a registered pupil at a school, the relevant law is section 444 of the Education Act 1996 – failure to secure regular attendance at school of registered pupil.
487,300 penalty notices were issued for unauthorised absence under s 444 in 2023-24 with 28,296 prosecutions for non-payment, [SOURCE] At the upper end of the scale, parents may be fined up to £2,500 [level 4] for knowingly failing to cause a child to attend school and imprisoned for up to 3 months [section 444(8A)]
Not Complying With SAO
However, if the child is NOT a registered pupil the current relevant law is section 443 – failure to comply with school attendance order [SAO]. Read my page on SAOs here https://edyourself.org/school-attendance-orders/
A School Attendance Order is issued when the child is not already registered at a school and the local authority is not satisfied with parents’ arrangements for education otherwise than at school. This may mean that home education has been judged unsatisfactory, or it may be that parents have simply opted not to enrol the child at school (for example if the preferred school is full) but without any intention of home educating.
The school attendance order does not make the child attend school, instead it requires the parent to register the child at school. (It should really be called a “registration order”) Only a parent can register a child with a school, not a local authority. Read more here
If the parent does not comply with the order – ie does not enrol the child in school – the local authority has to decide whether to prosecute for breaching the order. If parents are found guilty (ie if they do not turn up to court or if they enter a guilty plea or if they go to court and their defence of suitable education otherwise than at school is not accepted) they can be fined. The current fine limit is level 3.
SAO Prosecutions and Fines
In April 2025 the Ministry of Justice confirmed that there were 800 prosecutions for failing to comply with a school attendance order in 2023-24, with 546 fines. At present we don’t know the AMOUNT of the fines, just that a fine was imposed. DfE has said in relation to the Wellbeing Bill “it’s important to note that most fines related to SAOs are lower than the maximum” Source = Impact Assessment page 36, read more here
Wellbeing Bill To Change SAO Law
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill proposes to increase the maximum fine for breaching a school attendance order to £2,500 as well as the potential for a prison sentence, bringing it into line with penalties for knowingly failing to cause a child to attend school under s443. Read more here
The Wellbeing Bill also proposes that the local authority [LA] will be able to start the school attendance order process if parents fail to provide required information or updates for the new Children Not In School Register or for child protection enquiries or child protection action. The LA will specifically be able to judge education unsatisfactory if parents refuse home visits once in the school attendance order process. Read more here
DfE says “We can predict from Ministry of Justice [MoJ] data that the number of families ultimately subject to a fine for breach of a SAO will be low compared to the overall number of SAOs that are issued.” Source = Impact Assessment page 23, read more here
Neither the Ministry of Justice nor the Department for Education publish data on SAO fines but my MP Abtisam Mohamed has obtained the information via parliamentary questions The direct link for the PQ is here and the details below are taken from the linked spreadsheet
Prosecution Non-Compliance SAO
Fine Non-Compliance SAO
Numbers SAO
Since 2022 the Department for Education [DfE] has been asking local authorities for the following school attendance order information: a/ the number of section 437(1) preliminary notices (notice to satisfy); b/ the number of actual school attendance orders issued and; c/ the number of orders revoked.
DfE statistics on school attendance orders are published here https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/elective-home-education/2024-25-autumn-term
“In the 2023/24 academic year, an estimated 7,000 section 437(1) notices were issued, an increase of almost 80% from the previous academic year. An estimated 2,100 school attendance orders were issued and 400 school attendance orders revoked in this period, both an increase from the previous year estimates …30 local authorities reported issuing no section 437(1) notices whilst 54 local authorities reported issuing no school attendance orders.” [SOURCE]
In other words, according to these two sets of government statistics (neither of which is 100% reliable) 7000 preliminary notices resulted in 546 fines.
I have extracted the specific SAO data from the DfE spreadsheet and rearranged it in alphabetical order here https://edyourself.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SAO_stats.xlsx The image below is an illustration or click on the PDF here https://edyourself.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SAO_stats_2.pdf
