Contact Group comments on Government plans to crack down on term time holidays and truancy

Stephen Clarke, MD of Contact Group, responds to reports that Education Secretary, Michael Gove, plans to crack down on parents who take children out of school during term-time to go on holiday, as well as issue tougher fines for truancy in a drive to improve attendance rates. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) February 21, 2012 - Further to news reports that Education Secretary, Michael Gove, plans to crack down on parents who take children out of school during term-time to go on holiday, as well as issue tougher fines for truancy in a drive to improve attendance rates, Stephen Clarke, Managing Director, Contact Group (www.the-contactgroup.com), comments:

"Parents are breaking the law if they fail to ensure their child's regular attendance at school, so holiday applications need to be closely monitored. Taking children away from school during term-time for whatever reason can disrupt their education, particularly at a crucial stage in their school career. In order to manage term time absences, Local Authorities can systematically track those on holiday during term-time and if they have requested a holiday, that they return on the agreed date. Our Term Time Tracker system, for example, logs all holiday applications on to the system, then the system checks each day whether each child has returned on the agreed date. Such measures vastly improve Local Authority attendance figures and raise awareness to parents about the importance of getting children back to school on time.

"Furthermore, in order to reduce absenteeism it is imperative that parents of truants are contacted on the first day of absence. All schools need a systematic way of notifying parents when their child is absent from school, irrespective of whether a member of staff is off sick. Our Truancy Call system is the most comprehensive product on the market to address this. The system can make calls on their behalf, so from the school's point of view, they are alerting parents immediately and catching potentially persistent truants early before it gets serious."

For further information about Contact Group please visit http://www.the-contactgroup.com, call 0844 448 4422 or email sales ( @ ) the-contactgroup dot com. Follow ( @ ) contactgroup on Twitter.

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