Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of school attendance penalty notice regulations on NHS ambulance service staff with limited ability to choose annual leave due to operational rostering systems; whether she has assessed trends in the levels at which such families are impacted; and for what reason operational necessity may be accepted as an exceptional circumstance for Police and Fire and Rescue Service employees and not for NHS ambulance service staff.

All children are entitled to a full-time education. While the department recognises that some parents, including NHS ambulance service staff, may face constraints in choosing their annual leave because of operational rostering arrangements, we do not believe the solution is to endorse additional time away from school.

The department does not collect data on the occupations of parents who receive penalty notices, which means trends specifically affecting families of NHS ambulance service staff cannot be identified from the data available.

The national framework for penalty notices is designed to ensure fairness and consistency by applying expectations equally to all, rather than through blanket exemptions for particular occupations. Headteachers retain the discretion to grant leave of absence in exceptional circumstances and must consider each application individually, taking account of the specific facts and circumstances presented by the family. A family holiday would not normally constitute an exceptional circumstance.