I blogged back in November about the Isle of Wight Council’s pending appeal to the High Court against the magistrates’ decision that Mr Platt had not committed a criminal offence by taking his child out of school for seven days in term-time for a holiday. In that post, I set out the legal framework and commented that it does not fix a particular number of days that count as regular attendance, that presumably whether or not attendance was regular would depend on the pattern of attendance rather than just the number of days ,and that it would be interesting to see whether the Court found that an unauthorised absence of seven consecutive days counts as regular attendance in this case (in the context of the child’s attendance record over a longer period).
The High Court has upheld the magistrates’ decision, finding that the magistrates were entitled to take into account the wider picture of the child’s attendance. There has been extensive media coverage of the decision (e.g. The Times (pay wall), Guardian, BBC and Telegraph) and we will post a link to the judgment once it is available. In the meantime, parents should be cautious about treating this as High Court endorsement of any term-time holiday – each case still will turn on its facts.
11KBW’s Paul Greatorex represented Mr Platt.
Rachel Kamm, 11KBW, @kamm11KBW