Cllr Peter Crossen represents Bramhall South & Woodford Ward on Stockport Council.
The claim that Labour is on the side of working families rings hollow when you look at the reality of school attendance fines.
Since coming into government, fines for parents taking children out of school during term time have increased, hitting the very households Labour says it stands for.
At a time when families are already navigating rising costs, tighter budgets and more pressure than ever, the response has been to reach for a bigger stick.
That isn’t standing with working families. It’s making their lives harder.
Let’s be clear: parents aren’t keeping their children off school for fun.
They’re not casually deciding that education doesn’t matter, or that a week away is more important than their child’s future. The reality, for many families, is far more difficult, and far more human. In the middle of a relentless cost-of-living crisis, parents are being forced into impossible choices.
And instead of recognising that reality, the system punishes them for it.
Fining parents up to £160 per child per parent, for taking them out of school during term time, doesn’t solve the problem. It doesn’t improve attendance in any meaningful, long-term way. What it does do is add yet another financial burden onto families who are already stretched to their limits.
That isn’t a solution. It’s a penalty for being under pressure and completely misses the reality families are facing.
Holiday prices during school breaks are significantly higher, often double or triple the cost of the exact same trip just weeks earlier. For many families, especially those with multiple children, travelling during official school holidays simply isn’t affordable.
But cost is only part of the story.
The system also fails to recognise the reality of modern working life. In many households, both parents have to work just to make ends meet. And crucially, their holiday entitlement doesn’t always align.
Parents working in different industries, often for different employers, don’t get to simply choose the same weeks off. Peak holiday periods, especially those that coincide with school holidays, are in high demand. Employers can only approve so many staff off at once. That creates a bottleneck.
So families are left scrambling for a small number of available weeks that line up with school holidays, competing with colleagues for time off that may never be approved.
For many, it simply isn’t possible.
And that’s not even accounting for the complexity of modern family life. For many children today, there aren’t just two parents coordinating time off, there can be four. Blended families, separated parents, shared childcare arrangements all of which require coordination across multiple fronts.
Trying to synchronise leave, childcare, and family time across that reality within rigid school holiday windows is, for many, simply unworkable.
That leaves parents facing an impossible situation:
This isn’t about convenience. It’s about reality.
Attendance matters, of course it does, but punishment isn’t a strategy
Regular school attendance plays a essential role in a child’s education, development, and future opportunities.
But recognising that doesn’t automatically justify the current approach.
Because here’s the key issue: punishment is not a strategy.
Fining parents assumes that absence is primarily a matter of poor decision-making or disregard for education. In reality, the causes are far more complex.
If we’re serious about improving attendance, we need to address the root causes not just the symptoms.
The real reason for absence from school is often driven by deeper issues, including:
Financial pressure, particularly around travel and childcare
Modern working patterns, where parents simply cannot align leave
Wellbeing challenges, both for children and parents
A fine does nothing to resolve any of these.
It doesn’t reduce financial pressure.
It doesn’t change employer constraints.
It doesn’t improve wellbeing.
All it does is penalise the outcome without addressing the cause.
There’s also an uncomfortable truth at the heart of this issue.
School fines disproportionately affect those who are already struggling. For wealthier families, a £160 fine may be frustrating but it’s manageable. For lower-income households, it can be a serious financial hit.
But the inequality doesn’t stop at money.
It extends to mental health, experiences, and family life.
Because what’s really being restricted isn’t just a date on the calendar, it’s time together. It’s the ability to create memories. It’s the opportunity for children to experience moments with their families that stay with them for life.
And those things matter it’s a personal reality many families will recognise
My own father lives in Belfast, a short journey in distance, but not always easy in practice from Stockport.
When he generously offers to send gifts to my daughter, his granddaughter, I often tell him the same thing:
Don’t spend money on things that will be forgotten.
Come and visit. Spend time with us. Make memories.
Because that is what my daughter will carry with her. Not the presents, not the material things but the moments. The laughter. The time together.
Those are the experiences that shape who she becomes. Those are the memories that support her wellbeing, her confidence, and her sense of family.
And yet, under the current system, even those simple, meaningful choices can come with a penalty.
There’s also another problem with the current approach.
Government sets the rules and waves the stick, but it’s schools and teachers who are left to carry the can.
They are the ones having difficult conversations with parents. They are the ones dealing with frustration, anger, and distress from families who feel they are being treated unfairly. They are the ones caught in the middle of a policy they didn’t design.
Teachers should be focused on education, on supporting children, on building relationships with families, not acting as the front line for enforcing punitive measures.
This approach risks damaging trust between schools and parents, making the very goal of improving attendance even harder to achieve.
We should be Supporting families, not penalising them
If we want better attendance, the answer isn’t to clamp down harder. It’s to build a system that works with families, not against them.
That means:
This is about partnership, not enforcement.
When families feel supported, they engage more. When they feel punished, they disengage.
In reality the system out of touch with real life
The current approach assumes a level of flexibility and financial resilience that many families simply don’t have.
It doesn’t reflect modern working patterns.
It doesn’t account for rising living costs.
It doesn’t recognise the difficulty of aligning multiple working adults across households.
Instead, it applies a rigid rule and a blunt penalty regardless of context.
But real life isn’t rigid.
Families juggle work, finances, and family life all at once. Decisions are rarely simple, and they’re rarely made lightly.
A system that ignores that complexity risks becoming not just ineffective, but unjust.
The bottom line is school fines don’t fix the problem.
They don’t address the causes of absence.
They don’t support families under pressure.
They don’t create better outcomes for children.
What they do is add stress, deepen inequality, strain relationships with schools, and limit the very experiences that help children grow into well-rounded, secure individuals.
We need something better.
We need a system that understands real life, not one that punishes it.