The Department for Education (DfE) has told headteachers not to give pupils time off school for protests.
It comes after a report published last year called on the department to explicitly ban the practice of allowing so-called school strikes for Palestine.
The new guidance is set to replace the current version on Aug. 19.
Since November last year, children across Britain have joined pro-Palestine protests.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said at the time that she was “deeply concerned” over the sight.
Stop the War coalition, which organised the protests, published an article by pro-Palestine socialist professor Michael Lavalette, who defended school strikes, which he said had become “a key element of the anti-war movement armoury” after the beginning of the Iraq war.
Children have also been seen in climate protests in recent years, most notably, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who began skipping school when she was 15.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, pupils across the UK took part in a series of school strikes, led by Ms. Thunberg, related to climate change.
In March 2019, Edinburgh City Council said children absent from school to take part in climate strikes would not be penalised for doing so as long as they had the permission of parents or carers.
The authors questioned who is responsible for children’s safety and security during the protests.
They also argued that the tactic risks “a culture of absenteeism,” damages political neutrality in schools, and makes it difficult for schools to ensure children are not drawn into extremism.
The authors called on the DfE to make explicit that absence to protest is unacceptable, and should result in a fine “regardless of the total number of days of unauthorised absence taken by the child.”
Responding to the rule, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, claimed it may be “difficult” for schools to manage.
“We’re not sure this is terribly helpful,” the union leader said.
“Our view is certainly that pupils should not miss school to take part in protests. It is not only a matter of their lost learning but the fact that the school has to manage and follow up their absence.
“But it is also the nature of these things that the pupils involved in protests feel very strongly indeed about the cause over which they are protesting, and that this can be a very difficult and sensitive situation to manage.”
He said the union believes “these are matters that are best left to the discretion of schools.”
Elsewhere in the guidance, the DfE said a fine to parents must be considered if a child misses five days of school for unauthorised absence, and the cost of the fine is set to go up from £60 to £80 if it’s paid within 21 days, and from £120 to £160 if paid in 28 days.
State schools will also be required to share their daily attendance registers, and be able to see data from other schools via a centralised dashboard.
The DfE said the changes are aimed at improving “attendance following the pandemic which has seen a worldwide rise in absence and persistent absence driven by broken habits of attendance, and new and exacerbated barriers like mental ill health.”
According to official figures, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the overall absence rate in state-funded schools in England was around 4.5 percent. In the year 2021/22, the figure jumped up to 7.4 percent, before dropping back to 7.3 percent in the following year.
The percentage of pupils who were persistently absent, meaning they are missing more than 10 percent of school days, more than doubled from 10.36 percent before the pandemic to 22.3 percent in the year 2021/22.
Some 1.9 percent of pupils were severely absent in the year 2022/23, meaning they have missed more than half of the school days, compared to 0.81 percent before the lockdowns.
