[user104658]

People aren't going to be arsed about fines if the cost of the fine is less thanwhat the increased cost of the trip would be .

I do also find that there's a bit of a basic misunderstanding about attendance and school performance. They see a correlation between "attending" and "getting good grades" and think that kids get good grades BECAUSE they have good attendance, when it's pretty much the other way around. Kids who are not performing well generally (because of, say, home troubles, or just not being academically minded) are less likely to want to attend, and thus more likely to have poor attendance. It's not because "hours spent in school" dramatically increases outcomes. Obviously if a kid has VERY poor attendance they're not going to do well but anything above like 80% and major differences in grades are not going to be down to how many days off they had. A kid on track for good grades can take weeks off and still be ahead of their peers. There's no real uniformity (excuse the pun) to it.