Home and Online Schooling

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think we have to be slightly careful about the use of the numbers. The noble Lord talked about “literally hundreds of thousands of children” missing their education. That is conflating a number of different things, and I do not want to give the impression that there are hundreds of thousands of children missing all their education. There were 86,200 children identified as being home educated in the spring of this year, 24,700 children were classified as children missing education on the census day, and 94,900 missed education for a period at some point in the academic year. On bringing legislation, I think the noble Lord will have seen that a Private Member’s Bill has been introduced in the other place, and he may have heard my right honourable friend the Secretary of State speak warmly about it.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, a large number of children went missing from the educational roll as the pandemic ended and we lifted lockdown. What is being done specifically to identify those children and return them to the roll?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The department is working closely with schools, particularly around persistent absence and severe absence. Persistent absence is when a child is missing 10% or more of their school time, and severe absence is where a child misses 50% or more. We have an Attendance Action Alliance which the Secretary of State chairs, and we are expanding that to a number of other regional advice areas. We have expert attendance hubs and advisers working with schools to help identify and support these children back into school.