When the Law Punishes Parents for Their Child's Anxiety: School Refusal and the Fine System:
The letter comes first class. Eighty pounds if you pay within 21 days, £160 after that. Per parent. Per child. For ten unauthorised sessions.
Your child has not been on holiday. They have been on the bathroom floor at eight in the morning, in a panic so complete that getting them through the front door, never mind the school gate, is like pushing water uphill.
The law does not distinguish between a child who will not go to school and a child who cannot. Under the 2024 penalty notice framework, it is the same offence.
The short version
- Ten unauthorised sessions in a rolling ten weeks triggers a penalty notice. That is five school days.
- £80, rising to £160. Second notice in three years is £160 flat. After two, the route is prosecution.
- Schools often want medical evidence that services cannot produce in time, which is how anxious children end up marked unauthorised.
- You have more standing than the letter suggests, including statutory defences and a duty owed to your child by the local authority.
- The school attendance fines fact sheet sets all of that out, with what to write and who to write to.
What changed in 2024
From August 2024 the rules tightened and standardised across England. Fines rose for the first time since 2012, and every local authority now works to the same framework.
Ten sessions of unauthorised absence inside ten school weeks starts the process. For a child with severe school anxiety that is one bad week and a few difficult mornings.
First notice, £80, rising to £160 unpaid. Second inside three years, £160 with no discount. After two, you cannot be fined again, you can be prosecuted: up to £2,500, a community order, or three months. Plus a record that can surface on a future DBS check.
Nearly 400,000 penalty notices were issued in 2022 to 2023. A large number involved children with special educational needs.
The trap in the middle
Your child cannot attend. You go to the GP. The GP refers to CAMHS. CAMHS has a waiting list measured in months. The school records the absence as unauthorised because there is no diagnosis yet. The authority issues the fine. You explain. They tell you the school decides what is authorised. The school tells you they need medical evidence. You are still waiting for the appointment.
Services cannot see the child quickly enough to produce the paperwork schools ask for. Schools will not authorise without it. Authorities must act on unauthorised absence. The family absorbs the whole of that gap.
One mother I worked with received her second fine while her daughter was on a waiting list for assessment of severe anxiety. The school knew. The GP had written. The authority had been told. Ten sessions in ten weeks, so the notice was issued anyway, and ended with the line every family in this position learns to recognise: failure to pay may result in prosecution.
Worth knowing here: Department for Education guidance says schools should not routinely request medical evidence for absences related to mental health. That is set out with the rest of it in the fact sheet.
Same rule, different weight
The fines are meant to be even handed. Same rules for everyone. They land very differently depending on what you are carrying.
Take a term time holiday and you know the risk. You choose it, you budget for it, and it is effectively a surcharge on cheaper flights. You pay once and it is over.
Have a child who cannot attend and you chose none of it, you cannot budget for it, and the underlying difficulty does not resolve inside ten weeks, so the notices can keep coming.
It is mostly mothers who end up prosecuted. The parent who has already taken time off for GP appointments, spoken to the school repeatedly, read everything, tried every suggestion from every relative, and is by now anxious themselves about what eight in the morning is going to bring.
What the framework does not account for
The attendance system assumes consequences change behaviour. That holds for choices. It does not hold for a nervous system in threat.
A child with a broken leg is not marked unauthorised. A child having chemotherapy is not fined for missing lessons. Anxiety sits in a strange middle place where everybody agrees it is real, medical and not the child's fault, and it remains the parent's legal duty to override it by force of will.
You cannot parent your way out of a dysregulated nervous system, and you cannot fine your way into neurological change. When a child's body has classified school as danger, the legal duty to deliver them through the gates runs directly against the instinct to protect them.
What it does to a family
The money is one part. The rest is worse.
You are already living every morning as a battle, with your stomach dropping every time the school number appears. Then the letter arrives and confirms the thing you have been afraid of, which is that this is your fault and now it is official.
And a child who is already certain they are the problem learns that their anxiety has made their parents into offenders.
What actually helps a family in this position
Some authorities do this better. Notice to Improve letters before any fine. Dedicated teams who know the difference between defiance and dysregulation. That depends heavily on where you live.
What families need is fast access to support that understands the mechanism: teaching a child to recognise and interrupt panic, giving them language for what their body is doing, and building a return plan that is based on capacity rather than exposure alone. None of that arrives faster because a fine was issued.
If a notice has landed
You are not the first and you have not failed. Practical steps:
- Write to the school. Say plainly that the absence is anxiety related and ask for it to be authorised. Keep every copy.
- Document everything. Appointments, referrals, waiting list confirmations, emails, meeting notes. This is your evidence if it ever gets as far as court.
- Ask the school directly about their EBSA policy and request a meeting with the SENCO.
- Contact the local authority attendance team before a second notice, not after.
- If your child has been out for 15 days or more, write to the authority about their duty to arrange education under Section 19.
- Contact your local SENDIASS. It is free and independent.
The fact sheet covers each of those in detail, including the statutory defences.
Questions parents ask
Can I be fined when my child's absence is caused by anxiety?
Yes, a notice can still be issued, because the trigger is unauthorised absence rather than the reason behind it. That is not the end of the matter. There are statutory defences and there is guidance about medical evidence that many schools apply incorrectly.
Can the school insist on a GP letter?
Department for Education guidance says there is no need to routinely request medical evidence for mental health related absence, and that schools should not ask for evidence that is difficult for a parent to obtain.
Is there a right of appeal against a penalty notice?
There is no formal appeal. You can write to the school and the local authority, and if the matter reaches court there are defences available under Section 444.
What if my child has been out of school for months?
Once it is clear a child will be absent 15 days or more, the local authority has a duty under Section 19 to arrange suitable education. Many do not act until asked in writing.
I work with families in this position. Is there training?
Yes. The EBSA Practitioner Certification is two live days for coaches and school staff, covering the frameworks used in local authority guidance, the physiology underneath school avoidance, graded return planning, and where the work stops.
Where to go next
Related reading
- The School Gate Paradox: why forcing anxious children through it makes everything worse
- Your child cannot go to school: the first steps that actually help
- Supporting anxious children in schools
Stuart Thompson is the founder of The STILL Method and has spent more than 25 years working with anxiety, grief and nervous system recovery. His work has been featured in The Guardian and he is the author of 90 Days With Your Nervous System: Not Against It. The STILL Method has trained practitioners across the UK and worldwide.
