School Attendance (Duties of Local Authorities and Proprietors of Schools) Bill

Debate between Karen Bradley and Luke Hall

3rd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Luke Hall)]

It is a pleasure to respond to the debate and outline the Government’s view about the importance of delivering this provision. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) for her work on the Bill, and congratulate her on the manner in which she has managed to take it through the House and gather so much cross-party support. This is clearly a subject of huge importance to her. She talked passionately about the impact that the Bill will have in her constituency and across the country, and about how her experiences as a mother helped to shape her view about the importance of getting this issue right. I assure her that it is equally as important to me and to the Government more widely.

All evidence points to school as the best place for children’s attainment, wellbeing and development. This important Bill can play a crucial role in ensuring that all children attend regularly, and I am delighted to lend the Government’s support to it today. It has been clear through the passage of the Bill, as my right hon. Friend and the Schools Minister explained, that there has been significant cross-party support and co-operation at every stage. We thank hon. Members for that, including those on the Opposition Front Bench; it speaks volumes about the way that my right hon. Friend has managed to steer this important Bill through the House. Throughout its passage, Members have taken time to contribute and share experiences and views about how important this issue is, and we heard strong examples of the work that schools and local authorities are doing to improve attendance. We must ensure that that work continues and expands across the country.

The Government support the Bill, because we want to give parents clarity and to level up standards across all parts of England—across all 24,000 schools and 153 local authorities, and their 9 million pupils. Thanks to the incredible work of those schools and councils, we are starting to see signs of improvement. Last academic year, 440,000 fewer pupils were persistently absent or not attending than in the previous year, and 375,000 more children were in school almost every day—95% of possible sessions—compared with the year before. That second figure was based on improvements across the country across all phases, including key vulnerable cohorts such as children with special educational needs or those in receipt of free school meals.

Prior to the pandemic, we gradually reduced persistent absence from 17.4% in the school year that ended in 2010, to about 10% or 11% in the second half of the decade, up until the point at which covid struck. We are determined to get back there as quickly as we can, but there is further to go and the Bill will play an important part in that. There are still areas of the country where families cannot access the support they need, but by placing requirements in primary legislation for local authorities to exercise their functions with a view to promoting attendance, for schools to publicise an attendance policy, and for both to have regard to Department for Education guidance in doing so, we are taking another key step forward in ensuring consistency.

My right hon. Friend has been working closely with the Schools Minister, and he detailed on Second Reading and in Committee the comprehensive strategy that we have in place to support schools and councils to meet their expectations, whether that is through attendance hubs, attendance advisers, or the use of improving and groundbreaking data. I will not go over all that again, but we will continue to ensure that all that support still applies and is available to schools and councils.

My right hon. Friend raised an important point about holidays and staggering term time, and I completely agree with a number of the points she made. Of course, we absolutely sympathise with families who want to avoid more expensive periods, but we are clear that pupils should not miss school for term-time holidays, which cause unnecessary disruption to learning and make it harder for teachers to plan lessons and cover the curriculum. Obviously, those school holidays are not determined at national level: they are set by local schools and, depending on the type of school, by local authorities too. In our view, those institutions are best placed to make those decisions, but I know they will take into account some of the points that my right hon. Friend raised during her remarks, which I thought were very well made.

Some points were also raised by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). As I have tried to emphasise in my remarks, we are committed to tackling this issue through a cross-cutting attendance strategy, alongside wider covid-recovery efforts. Our programmes are aimed at supporting the most vulnerable children, whether that is by investing billions of pounds to expand and transform NHS mental health services or by investing £40 million in our national school breakfast programme, which provides free breakfasts to children in schools in disadvantaged areas. We are also providing wide and comprehensive support for schools—whether through the local government finance settlement, the additional £200 million Supporting Families programme, or £2.6 billion until 2025 through the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan—and are providing £200 million for the holiday activities and food programme, too.

This is a hugely important Bill, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford has done a huge service to pupils up and down the country, including those in her constituency, by bringing it forward. Being in school has never been more valuable than it is now, with standards continuing to rise through the hard work of teachers. My right hon. Friend referred to the rocketing of schools’ performance: 90% are now good or outstanding, up from 68% under the last Labour Government. We have the fourth best primary school readers in the world, and our secondary school children have risen from 27th to 11th in maths—that is a transformation in standards and achievement—and from 25th to 13th in reading.

[Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I am very struck by the comments that the Minister is making about the improvement in schools. Will he congratulate the schools in Staffordshire Moorlands, where since 2010, we have gone from fewer than 70% of schools being good or outstanding to nearly 90% now?

[Luke Hall]

My right hon. Friend’s intervention demonstrates the on-the-ground importance of the improvements in standards that we have seen over recent years. I have no doubt that that is down to the tremendous hard work of teachers, the local authority, parents and students, and I know that my right hon. Friend has been a strong champion of improving school performance. Of course, it is not just in Staffordshire; all around the country we are seeing that drive for standards and rocketing international comparisons. I thank her for raising that point; she was absolutely right to do so.

Crucially, this Bill will help to make sure that every young person and their family, whatever their background and wherever they are in the country, receives the support they need to be in school, to make sure they are attending, and to benefit from the transformation in educational standards that we have seen over the past few years.

I sincerely thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions today; my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) spoke passionately about the importance of delivering this Bill, and I thank her for her contribution. I know that this issue is important to her, and one that she has raised many times with Ministers and with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford. I thought my hon. Friend spoke very eloquently about the importance of delivering this Bill and its value to her constituents.

Finally, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford on bringing forward this important Bill, which the Government are delighted to support. I commend it to the House.