Rejected petition Remove fines for parents taking children out of school up to 5 days

Remove the fines and criminal record threats faced to parents when they decide to take children out of school for a short period of time. There are many reasons why parents decide to do this and the schools/government should be working with parents not against.

More details

This puts a huge amount of pressure and stigma to parents facing the cost of living crisis and/or parenting a child of SEN that going away during half terms isn’t suitable. Other situations for example parents not being able to take annual leave during half terms restricts them spending time together. Then with the fine and criminal record can be devastating. The pressure of having a criminal record for this makes parents feel stuck.Trust that parents have the best intentions for their children.

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 the following petition, which calls for similar action:

Allow parents to take their children out of school for 5 school days in a year
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/728790

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

Date submitted 29 October 2025
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.