To be honest I don’t have much sympathy with this couple. They knew that there would be consequences when they took their kids out of school.
However, there is a distinct lack of consistency with how local authorities deal with school absence.
Due to a change in personal circumstances, my granddaughter has been trying, for a couple of months, to find a school placement for her daughter. She phones the authorities frequently but is told that there are no places available.
How can one set of parents be fined for “temporarily” removing their child from school whilst the local authorities fail to find a placement for my great granddaughter and face no punishment. I thought it was a legal requirement that children had to go to school.
Doesn’t that same law hold the local authorities liable for the provision of that schooling ?
If my granddaughter had chosen to keep her daughter away from school, they would have fined her.
WrAnTz 
This made me think of when my niece was being bullied at school, the schools answer was since it only happened on one day a week when a certain other student (the bully) was there for my sister to keep her daughter home from school on that day, what a joke……… that didn’t help much