The Department of Health and Social Care takes on parental responsibility for ensuring any children in care attend school regularly.

The law dictates that if any child who is a registered pupil at a school fails to attend regularly, the parent can be fined up to £1,000.

Legal responsibility and liability for prosecution for poor attendance lies with the parent.

David Ashford (Douglas North) tabled a Tynwald question for written answer by Attorney General John Quinn, asking what the situation was if a child was in care.

Mr Quinn confirmed the DHSC which would have parental responsibility.

He added that a care order did not remove parental responsibility for the child prior to such an order being made.

In terms of liability for prosecution, the attorney general said: ’As with any matter which is being considered for prosecution, regard would be had to the individual circumstances of the case and to whether, taking account of the circumstances - which would include the effective responsibilities being exercised by every person with parental responsibility, it could be said to be in the public interest to pursue criminal proceedings against any or all such persons.’

In a separate question, Mr Ashford also asked Education and Children Minister Graham Cregeen how many children in care were recorded as having regular non-attendance at school and, of those, how many of those had non-attendance amounting to more than 30 days.

Mr Cregeen said: ’There are currently 12 children in care who have regular non-attendance at school - regular non-attendance is defined where attendance has fallen below 80%.

’Nine of these 12 children had non-attendance at school in excess of 30 days in the last school year.’