The debate on parental responsibility in relation to their children's exclusion from school rumbles on. In the House of Lords earlier this week, education minister Lord Adonis refused to force schools to offer alternative provision for excluded children from day one, despite warnings from campaign groups that requiring a parent to take time off from work to supervise a child for the first five days of any exclusion would pose considerable difficulties for some families.
Adonis stuck to his guns, though, insisting that everything would be fine: parents could simply call on relatives and friends to supervise their children if they couldn't get the time off work themselves.
Wrong. As the report on the provision of services for families with disabled children published by MPs today reveals, such help is not so easy to come by for this group of parents. They are exactly the ones who struggle most to find people to care for their children. Yet many of their children also have special educational needs and make up a large chunk of the excluded population. These parents will have no choice but to miss work everytime their child is excluded - and face the financial consequences that that brings.
But the Advice Centre for Education is not ready to admit defeat yet. It is determined to use the MPs' report to flag up the issue again when the Education and Inspections Bill returns to the House of Lords for its third reading.
A compromise must be reached, otherwise it is the most vulnerable who will pay the price for the government's determination to go to any length to appear tough on all forms of 'antisocial behaviour'.