Labour’s term-time holiday crackdown won’t work

In the bestselling book Freakonomics, the authors Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt outline an experiment which involved fining parents who were late to pick up their children from daycare centres. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the financial penalty only made late pick-ups worse; the parents felt less guilty for the teachers they were delaying, and most parents were prepared to pay the price because they decided it was still worth being late.

This experiment demonstrated the limit of economic incentives without other social motivations: something which seems very timely as we return to the debate around whether parents should be fined for taking their children on holiday during term-time. For Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. She says that fines are a ‘well-established practice’, ‘are here to stay’, and are actually increasing from £60 a day to £80 a day, which doubles if not paid within 21 days.

This increase is likely to change very little: £80 a day is still small change compared to the hundreds or even thousands of pounds parents save by going on term-time holidays: they may break the rules, but they at least don’t break the bank.