A legal challenge to education secretary Michael Gove’s ban on term-time holidays is being mounted by a group of parents.
More than 200,000 parents have signed a petition backing a group of families who are seeking a judicial review of the rules, which they claim are a breach of the human right to family life.
The campaign group coordinating the legal action, “Parents want a say”, was launched at the weekend and is run by Karen Wilkinson, a mother of three from Bath in Somerset, the Telegraph reported.
The parents are supported by John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP who successfully campaigned to open up family courts.
The challenge comes as new figures show more than 24,000 children skip school every day to go on family holidays.
Wilkinson said parents do not just take children out of school because they want cheaper holidays, and those with more serious reasons are being refused permission under stricter rules laid down by Gove last September.
She said other reasons included “for weddings, to visit elderly grandparents who live abroad or even in some cases when doctors have sanctioned the request because it is in the child’s interest.”
One family, who will be a test case in the legal action, are the Dale family from Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
The parents of Daniel Bales, 10, who has Asperger’s syndrome, are determined to take him on a family holiday next month when the Spanish resorts will be quieter. They want him to be able to play in the pool without being stressed out by too many other children.
His mother Sharon told the Sunday Times her son gets “very anxious around noise and heat”.
Despite supplying a letter from Daniel’s psychiatrist supporting the family’s plans, the holiday was refused. In a letter to the family the school’s head teacher said the decision from the school to refuse the request was “harsh”.
Parents who do not have the school’s permission for their child’s absence face a maximum fine of £60 per pupil per parent.
Gove ended a policy that allowed schools to grant up to 10 days holiday a year to families in “special circumstances.”
Head teachers are now only allowed to grant leave in “exceptional circumstances.”