The Education Welfare Service’s main role is to promote and enforce regular school attendance, via monitoring each child’s attendance, as well as providing support and advice to schools, the pupils and their families.
Education Welfare Officers are based in secondary schools and visit primary schools regularly to check registers, talk to teachers and receive referrals about young people. They also undertake home visits to speak to parents whose child is not attending school.
Punctuality is also an area of concern, as arrival at school after the end of registration results in an unauthorised absence. This is for legal reasons.
The school leaving date for pupils in year 11 is the last Friday in June of that academic year. Only after this date can a young person obtain legal full-time employment.
Term Time Holidays
It is sometimes thought that parents have a right to take children out of school for up to ten days a year for the purpose of taking holidays. this is in fact a myth, and there is no right to remove children from school for the purpose of a holiday at all.
What is compulsory school age?
A child is of compulsory school age when they reach the age of five. However, children are only required to attend school from the beginning of the term which follows their fifth birthday (including a term which begins on the child's fifth birthday).
Whose responsibility is it to ensure a child attends school?
It is the job of anyone who comes within the definition of "parent" within the Education Act 1996 to ensure that a child attends school.