Parents in Kirklees continue to take their children on holiday during term-time despite a Government crackdown and the threat of fines.
A year ago rules were changed meaning head teachers could only give permission in exceptional circumstances.
While authorised term-time holidays fell by almost 60%, unauthorised holidays soared by 40% leading to tens of thousands of missed days.
Figures from the Department for Education show in the autumn and spring terms of 2012-13 Kirklees children missed the equivalent of 30,000 days on authorised holidays and a further 391 days on extended holidays.
But in the same period last year 12,400 days were taken in authorised holidays and none were missed in extended holidays.
Meanwhile, the number of days missed as unauthorised holiday soared by 40% from 19,000 to more than 26,600.
The rules on term-time holidays were changed in September 2013, meaning head teachers could no longer grant up to 10 days holiday in special circumstances. Instead, they could only grant term-time leave in exceptional circumstances.
In January the Examiner revealed that 988 penalty notices had been issued against parents for flouting rules in 2013.
Parents faced fines of £60 rising to £120 and could be taken to court if they failed to pay. About 100 parents ended up before magistrates last year.
Nationally, two million days were lost to authorised absences in 2012-13 falling to 800,000 last year.
But unauthorised holiday rose by almost a third from 1.27m to 1.64m. The rise was mostly due to primary age children missing school.
A council spokesperson said: “In light of the government’s strengthening of the legislation preventing children taking holidays in term time the discretion that headteachers have to authorise such holidays has been removed in all but exceptional cases.
“Since September 2013 when the new rules were introduced there has been a significant decrease in the number of holidays authorised by headteachers in Kirklees. This is in line with the national trend and is a logical outcome of the intention of the government in bringing about such changes to the guidance.
“Kirklees council is committed to providing the best start in life for its young people in schools. Therefore, every lesson of every day is important and absence from school can be very damaging to a child’s education. We have an excellent record in Kirklees of reducing absence from school and overwhelmingly it is the case that parents are very supportive of the measures taken locally to promote attendance at school.”
