Included, engaged and involved part 1: promoting and managing school attendance

7. Measures for Compulsory Compliance

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that efforts to improve outcomes for children are progressed quickly and involve an appropriate and proportionate level of intervention. Measures for compulsion are expensive processes which are time consuming and can lead to further unnecessary interventions into family life. Measures for compulsion can be used when efforts to engage children and families in voluntary measures to improve attendance have failed.

Parents have a legal responsibility to ensure their child attends school until he or she reaches school leaving age (section 30 Education (Scotland) Act 1980). There is no clear evidence that legal sanctions improve school attendance.

Parents who have enrolled their child at a public school at any time are then required to ensure their child attends, unless the education authority has consented to the withdrawal of their child from education (section 35 Education (Scotland) Act 1980).

Further details of measures can be found at Appendix 1.