Schools should be banned from slapping parents with fines for taking their kids on holiday during term time, a number of MPs have said.
The controversial practice of hitting parents with financial penalties for taking children out of school has been labelled unfair.
It has been a divisive issue for years and that showed during a debate on the issue in Parliament.
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Many parents choose to take their kids away during term time because holidays are so much cheaper then compared to the school holidays.
Thousands have been fined in the West Midlands in recent years for defying these rules.
A number of MPs claimed it was unfair to punish well-meaning parents of children whose attendance records were otherwise good.
There was also anger towards "exploitative" travel companies who hike prices during school holidays.
The debate was called in response to a petition signed by 181,000 people.
Conservative MP Robbie Moore said: "It is surely true that the parents paying these fines and objecting to feelings of having broken the law are the same parents who are generally law abiding and value their children being in school.
"The fines are not successfully tackling the national scandal of persistent absenteeism in the wake of Covid, and yet they are wreaking havoc for otherwise well-meaning families."
Helen Hayes, the Chair of the Education Committee, said: "I agree that fining parents is a very flawed area of policy.
"I do not want to say it is always entirely the wrong thing to do, but fines are not a particularly effective mechanism for discouraging parents from removing their children from school for a holiday.
"The cost of a fine is almost always cheaper than the additional costs of a holiday outside term time.
"That is why I said that the solution to the imbalance in costs across term time is not to enable and authorise that absence, but to deal with the exploitative policies of travel companies.
"Fines, undoubtedly, are an imperfect mechanism."
The Reform MP Rupert Lowe chimed in: "Schools should support families, not to replace them.
"Yet right now in Britain parents are being fined and threatened simply for taking their children out of school for a handful of days to spend meaningful time together as a family.
"Is that such an awful crime? I think not."
Labour MP Andrew Cooper said: "For parents on lower incomes who decide to take their children on holiday during school term time, the financial challenges they face are often compounded by the imposition of a fine, which many families struggle to afford."
The Government, however, has suggested there won't be any changes to current laws, stating its commitment to boosting attendance levels.
Education minister Georgia Gould said: "We are committed to tackling the problem. As we have heard from many, absence is one of the biggest barriers to opportunity, damaging learning, health and wellbeing, future earnings and employment.
"Each day of lost learning can do serious harm. That is why we will not allow pupils to miss 10 days of school without good reason.
"However, that does not mean that we are not committed to working alongside families.
"This Government introduced the national framework for penalty notices, which defines a "support first" approach, working alongside families."
She added: "Recent research shows that just an extra 10 days out of school halves a pupil's chance of getting a grade 5 in English and maths, compared with a similar child with strong attendance."