Parents whose children were off school without permission were forced to cough up more than £37,000 in fines in the past two years.

Reading Borough schools issued 746 ‘fixed penalty notices’ (FPN) to parents of children missing school from 2017 to 2019.

Councils and schools are allowed to hand out £60 fines if children are deemed to be missing classes without a good reason.

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Bosses can issue parenting orders, a school attendance order, an education supervision order and a fine.

The penalty goes up to £120 if it is not paid within 21 days.

Those parents who do not pay up within four weeks of being given a fine can be prosecuted by the council and ordered to cough up £2,500 or could be a jail sentence.

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Councillor Ashley Pearce, lead member for Education, said: "The rate of school attendance is one of the best indicators of school and students success.

"Our schools do a great job in encouraging attendance to ensure our young people are in school to be educated.

"Fines are only used as a last resort to get patents to comply with their legal duty for children to attend school.

"Whilst all cases are looked at individually, all evidence shows that pupils attendance rates have a big impact on student achievement".

Of the 746 fines given out from 2017 to 2019, 99.5 per cent were paid within 28 days.

In the five cases where fines were not paid within 28 days, parents were taken to court.

The council has made £37,200 from fines issued to parents whose kids were out-of-school without good reason.

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Of the 746 cases, 94 per cent of parents were fined for ‘unauthorised leave in term time, e.g. being taken out of school for holiday’.

The other six per cent of cases were for ‘general unauthorised absence/truancy, including parentally condoned absence’.

No parents were fined for persistent pupil absence or late return from holidays.

Other Berkshire local authorities also revealed how many parents were given PFNs in a series of Freedom of Information requests made last year.

Reading Chronicle:

Wokingham Borough schools pocketed £95,000 from more than 1,600 fines, while West Berkshire's education chief handed out more than 600 fines and got £31,740 back.

Bracknell Forest education chiefs collected £40,000 for more than 700 FPNs, while the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead only received £17,987 from fewer than 500 fines.

Slough Borough schools raked in a table-topping £157,000 from more than 3,200 FPNs across the same two-year period.