This article was posted on the 27th March 2017 by the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39380529
A recent story in the news about a parent wanting to take their child on holiday during term-time has resulted in this article being published. The headline of this article states that ‘term-time holidays accounted for a quarter of unauthorised absences from schools in England, analysis of official figures show.’ According to teachers the threat of £60 fines for an unauthorised absence do not deter parents from taking their children on holiday during term-time, when in fact the main reason is because of the price of holidays increase during the school holidays.
This article can be critiqued because of the percentages they use in the headline and the main body of the article contradict each other. The headline of the article states that a quarter (25%) of unauthorised absences are due to term-time holidays, however, later in the article it states that ‘term-time holidays accounted for an average of 27% of all missed “sessions” of school’. This therefore makes the article misleading as the reader will not know which percentage is the correct one. These figures can also be misleading because the numbers that are given for the academic year of 2015-16 saying how many children had unauthorised absences because of a term-time holiday was 801,980, which results in being 24% of all unauthorised absences for that academic year.
Also, we do not know the context of this article for example, it does not tell us whether the number of unauthorised absences have increased over time or have stayed roughly around the same amount, the article only gives us information from 2014-15 academic year and 2015-16 academic year. Also, the article does not tell us whether the number of pupils enrolling at school have increased, therefore if they have increased then it would result in there being more unauthorised absences than in previous years.
Overall this article can be reliable as the data is from a reliable source, however, the way in which the data is presented in this article can be misleading for the readers because it does not contain all the information needed to understand all the data and it does not contain other reasons as to why a child miss school, the article only gives u the reader the main reasons, which are; term-time holidays, children arriving late. Whereas there are reasons such as the child may be ill, which would result in an unauthorised absence if the parent does not let the school know.