Parents will not face automatic fines for taking children out of lessons and onto the beach, Merton Council has said.

Last week the Wimbledon Guardian reported more than 13,000 school days were lost across the borough because of term-time holidays - but a councillor and former headteacher has said schools needed to understand the pressure on families, and warned against hitting parents with charges.

This week the council confirmed no parent had been fined purely on the basis of unauthorised holiday absences - and said fines would only be handed out if term-time holidays were part of a wider pattern of missed lessons.

Councillor Jeff Hanna, adviser to the cabinet member for education, admitted he was concerned by the wide gap between holiday-linked absence levels at different schools - but said headteachers needed to understand the difficulties faced by families struggling to get time off work.

Coun Hanna, a former deputy headteacher at Tamworth Manor school in Mitcham, said: “Imposing fixed penalties automatically is not the answer, and would be damaging to relationships between schools and the families.

“A letter from the headteacher, emphasising the importance of education, is more positive, although it might warn of the need to impose a penalty if another term time holiday is taken without authorisation.”

He added: “Ideally, schools should have a system by which parents can apply for permission for their child’s absence, explaining the circumstances, and attaching any confirmation from their employer if that is appropriate. The headteacher should then consider each request on its merits.”

Figures released to the Wimbledon Guardian last week under the Freedom of Information Act showed 13,041 school days were lost this academic year. The statistics do not include absences in the final half of the summer term - which the council said were not centrally recorded - or absences at academies and private schools.

They also revealed a wide gap in holiday-absences in different classrooms across the borough, with the twice as many lost to term-time holidays in some schools as others.