Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy for children to be permitted to miss a day of school to celebrate (a) Eid and (b) Yom Kippur without that absence affecting their attendance records.

A parent of a compulsory school-aged child who is registered at a school has a legal duty to secure that child’s regular attendance. The law recognises that there are certain circumstances in which a parent cannot be guilty of not securing their child’s regular attendance at school, and religious observance is one of those circumstances.

The law also specifies how attendance should be recorded. Where a pupil of compulsory school age is unable to attend school on a day exclusively set apart for religious observance by the religious body to which the pupil’s parents belong, the pupil’s absence must be recorded as an authorised absence.