Rejected petition Stop issuing school fines to BOTH parents if parents are legally separated

UK law currently allows Fixed Penalty Notices to be issued to both parents following an unauthorised absence, despite parents being estranged.

The law needs to be changed to protect the parent not responsible for an absence when it was beyond their control and often knowledge.

More details

Many families experience absent parents, Domestic Violence & other complicated matters which prohibit communication between two separated parents. There are often Court Orders in place prohibiting communication from taking place.

It is unreasonable for a Local Authority to impose a Fixed Penalty Notice to two parents following an authorised absence from school.

Headteachers should not be allowed to instruct councils to fine BOTH parents when only one is responsible for the period of absence.

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

You may wish to sign this petition which calls for a similar action: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/620795

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 8 November 2022
Get petition data (json format)

About petition data

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.