As we are just coming towards the summer months, now is the time when stories and general frustrations about more recent government fines for taking children on holiday during term time come to the fore. I was particularly interested to see this story on the BBC yesterday, telling us that in the 21-22 academic years, 5,600 parents in Oldham paid a combined total of £240,000 for unauthorised absences, with the overwhelming majority of those fines for term time holidays. A significant proportion of the fines, according to local headteachers, were due to issues of poverty, with some children acting as carers or even having to help out more at home as parents work on zero hours contracts.

The usual government response to these fines is to simply look at the statistics and note the correlation between absenteeism and academic performance. They then simply insist this is all the evidence one needs to see the importance of dissuading the choice to stay away from school for any reason. As Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said bluntly in the BBC article, ‘If it’s a deliberate decision to take your child out of school for unauthorised absence, then that’s something we do not want to encourage.’

The problem with the government approach on these issues boils down to the fact that life is more nuanced than a bald correlation of statistics. One of the issues here is that they fail to recognise the mischief they are trying to eradicate. Is the concern slipping academic performance? Is it persistent truanting? If it’s something else, it’s unclear what because the government never say. Whatever it may be, the solution to the particular mischief is unlikely to be the same in every case and is almost certainly not answered in any case by instigating a fine. Unless, of course, you are just aiming for a blunt instrument that stops people taking holidays in terms time without credible grounds for that being necessary of appropriate in every case.

If, for example, the concern is slipping academic performance due to absenteeism, there doesn’t seem to be any ground on that basis to deny a request for a term time holiday to a child who is academically high achieving, whose attendance is otherwise perfect and for whom there are no behavioural concerns. If the issue is to do with persistent truanting, not only does what I just said apply in the same way to that previous child who isn’t persistently truanting, I suspect fining the parents of children who are doing so won’t fix the problem and may exacerbate the issues that may be driving it in the first place.

What we seem to be dealing with is an age old political problem. The government are looking at the stats – rightly noting that there is a correlation between academic performance and attendance – and implementing a blunt instrument to address the majority issue set before them. What they are not doing is considering the underlying causes and addressing those nor asking any questions about whether the measures put in place are necessary for everyone. If the concern really is the link between attendance and performance, then action needs to focus on those who are persistently truanting and failing to achieve their academic potential on that basis. No action is required for those whose attendance is persistently high nor even for those regular absentees who are nevertheless somehow managing to be also be academic high achievers. There is a particular group of people, those whose academic achievement is clearly less than it could or should be, specifically because of their persistent non-attendance.

For that reason, I cannot see why we wouldn’t go back to the old – but frankly equitable and sensible – position of giving headteachers discretion to grant up to 2 weeks term-time leave. Guidelines could easily be issued suggesting good attendance, meeting academic targets and good behaviour are all factors to be considered. This would allow headteachers to grant term time holidays where the matters of concern are not at issue with the right to withhold such permission where they are with fines, and potentially other measures, available to the local authority if and when absences are unauthorised. But the government haven’t bothered to think that deeply about it and instead choose to whack fines on all and sundry despite how effective or necessary that is for most to whom it is applied. They also let holiday companies hold people to ransom – hitting the poorest hardest and ensuring they are the least likely of all to get a holiday – to address issues that are not always at play. But the heart of the problem is an unnuanced view of life, a leaden reading of broadly true stats and an unwillingness to acknowledge a blunt instrument.

We can end up doing something similar in the church. It is very easy to take a look at clear and obvious trends, recognise that those who do the same things may find bad outcomes and then, in a similarly unnuanced way, have expectations or measures that end up being unfit for purpose. Think, for example, of the general and obvious trend that if you don’t meet together regularly with God’s people it is likely to stunt your growth and there is a definite correlation between those who stay away and those who end up renouncing their faith altogether. But it would be all too easy to simply insist that everybody attend a certain amount and that church discipline will be brought to bear on those who do not show up the requisite amount. Whilst that might serve some people, the truth is life is much more complicated than that and you may end up enacting church discipline against people for whom it is both unnecessary and, frankly, unhelpful.

For example, what do you say about the attendance of someone who has a serious and ongoing health condition that makes it difficult to come out? You can say all you like that staying away is bad for their spiritual growth, but that takes no account of the reality of their situation. Or consider a young convert still living at home with their staunchly Muslim family for whom it might be dangerous in a variety of ways to come with regularity such that everybody knows what they’re doing. What about those folks who desperately want to meet with God’s people Sunday morning, and are doing their level best to organise their lives so they can do so, but have found it necessary to work unsociable hours such that they can’t? What about those folks working in vital and necessary industries – such as the care sector or in the NHS – we all recognise are needed 24/7 and therefore may be unable to come all the time? All these things are real situations and are part of the nuance of life. Simply applying a hard line and insisting it be met by all, without thinking about the actual issue we are trying to address nor whether it would do anything to meaningfully address it, isn’t helpful nor effective.

And that is just on one basic and pretty obvious church issue like attending a worship service. Just imagine the countless ways that coming up with blunt solutions to evident trends – real as those trends may be – do not help us account for the many and varied circumstances and nuances of life. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to implement solutions for those trends that work for the most part. But we have to have enough sense to recognise that sometimes those solutions will not work and may make matters worse if we leadenly apply them to all. We have to be clear about the specific issue we are trying to address rather than simply lumping everybody in with “the stats”. Because one thing is always true of stats, what might be the case for the majority middle will necessarily not be true for the fringes. There are always outliers, sometimes lots of them. We have to recognise that whatever we do to address the majority middle may well not be helpful or appropriate for those for whom the trends do not hold.