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Unauthorised absence: how and when to use sanctions

Find out how to formally address severe attendance concerns. Understand the differences between attendance contracts, education supervision orders (ESOs), penalty notices and prosecution, and when to use each one.

Last reviewed on 11 September 2025See updates
School types: All•School phases: All•Ref: 49630
Contents
  1. Use sanctions as a last resort
  2. Start with support for pupils with poor attendance
  3. Next, consider a formal attendance contract
  4. Refer pupils to your LA for an ESO if necessary
  5. Use penalty notices as an alternative to prosecution
  6. Only your LA can prosecute

Note: references to 'parents' throughout this article means all those with parental and/or day-to-day responsibility of a child or young person, as defined in the statutory guidance on working together to improve school attendance.

Use sanctions as a last resort

The sanctions outlined in this article should only be used when all other options have been exhausted.

Find examples of proactive and preventative steps you can take to avoid getting to this point, in our article on how to develop an attendance strategy. Before moving to sanctions, consider all the stages from our case study of a 6-step strategy that transformed attendance and the stages outlined below in this article.

Legal interventions can only be used for pupils of compulsory school age and all decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis. 

Before sanctions, you should always identify barriers to attendance, and work with parents