Children Not in School: National Register and Support

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

I agree that we absolutely must do more to support young carers, and I give the undertaking that a Labour Government would ensure that young carers’ voices, needs and rights and the support that should be made available to them are taken seriously.

Members on both sides of the House will be familiar with the view widely held by those on the Conservative Benches that whatever damage they might have done to our country, whether it be laughing in the face of voters waiting year after year for NHS treatment, as the Prime Minister did last week, the sewage that fills our rivers and seas, or the growing crisis their party has created in provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities—separate from all that—at least the education that children receive in our country is something the Conservative party has not yet damaged beyond repair. The trouble with that belief is that if it were ever true, today it is no longer.

At the end of last year, the OECD’s programme for international student assessment 2022 results came out. Conservative Members have for many years taken a keen interest in the results, which I should say at the outset are based on such a small sample in England that they may not be altogether robust—a point to which I intend to return. Close observers will have noticed that, over a number of years, the intellectual effort by the Conservative party and its apologists has moved from explaining to concealing what the results show, and from regarding them as a spur to action to taking them as an excuse for complacency. We are in a debate on an education matter, so I hope that Members across the House and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will forgive me if I briefly adopt a didactic tone.

The PISA score for each country shows how well that country is doing at educating its children across reading, maths and science. The PISA rankings are about how well the children in that country are doing relative to children in other countries. Rather obviously, that ranking is affected by not merely how well children do in other countries, but how many other countries are involved. Going up or down the rankings need be no measure of changing outcomes for children in England, nor of any success for this Government. It is therefore the scores, not the rankings, that are the proper focus of Government attention.

It is not enough that our children are doing better than children elsewhere if they are doing worse than their older siblings, nor is it a comfort that their reading is better than that of children in another country if it is worse than their brothers and sisters. Education is not a contest between nations, but a shared endeavour in every country and across our world to give children the very best start—not some of our children, but all of them.

The PISA results showed that standards in England’s schools are going backwards in science, in reading and in maths. They may not be going backwards as fast as they are elsewhere, but the pace of failure ought not to be a source of pride. Some 14 years into a Conservative Government, they focus carefully on the rankings, not the scores, and their proudest claim is that other children for whom they are not responsible are getting an even worse education overseas.

It beggars belief—and it is no good blaming the pandemic. The pandemic was worldwide, but not every country has gone backwards. That slow failure is not a story of poor teaching, of staff not pulling their weight or of leaders not rising to the challenges they face. It is structural, reflecting choices made in Downing Street and the priorities of the Conservative party: tax breaks for private schools, not standards for state schools, and smaller bills for the super-rich, not better starts for children. The one area in which this Government excel is the creation and maintenance of fresh barriers to learning.

Schools may crumble—indeed, despite the Secretary of State’s well-publicised view of the quality of her own work, the BBC’s “Panorama” programme last night showed powerfully that schools do crumble—but nothing seems to stop Ministers putting fresh barriers in the way of our children getting the education they deserve. There are barriers because the children are neither at school nor in home education; barriers because children are not ready that day, or that year; barriers because children have not slept and cannot concentrate, do not succeed when they should and are not learning when they ought; barriers because children simply are not well; and barriers that speak to the wider failure, and the piling of expectations on schools alone that schools alone can never meet.

Child poverty’s effects do not end as the classroom door closes. The good night’s sleep, the space to do homework and the quiet undisturbed time at home are all missing from far too many of our children’s lives. As I mentioned earlier, the PISA results are based on such a small sample in England that they may not be altogether robust, and that points, indirectly, at the problems we face—the problems with which the next Labour Government will and must contend, because this Government have not, are not and will not. Teaching children who come to school does not help those who do not, supporting children we know about will not bring in the ones we do not, and the results for children who are there are not meaningful for the children who are not. That is true for PISA, true for GCSEs and true for A-levels.

Labour’s belief is simple: excellence is for everyone—not just for those who are in school every day, but for those who are not. High and rising standards must be in every school, in every classroom and for every child, but today, all too clearly, they are not. Across the autumn and spring terms last year, more than 1.5 million children were persistently absent from school. That is, roughly speaking, one in five children, or more than double the number who were absent during the same terms five years ago. If that rise goes on, the number of children persistently absent will rise to more than 2 million in 2025-26, or one in four children missing at least a day each fortnight. That is a disaster, and the Government are doing as close as they can to nothing at all.

Let me quote to the House the words of the headteacher of a state secondary school in the north-east, earlier this month:

“Today, an unremarkable Wednesday in the second week back after a two week holiday, 10% of our students are absent from school. 17% of Year 11 students, those in the most important examination year of their lives, are absent. We’ve become used to these statistics and sadly, these patterns of absence are now considered normal in schools. Indeed, our attendance is higher than national and local averages.”

Ministers will doubtless tell me they are proud of their attendance hubs, and the 10 councils in which they are set to deliver attendance mentoring. The Secretary of State might as well be proud of the water pistol she brings to a wildfire. School leaders know it is a disaster. They can see the catastrophe unfolding around them.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is giving a truly excellent speech. She has talked about barriers; does she agree that one of the big barriers is the fact that children with a neurodivergent condition cannot get a diagnosis and, even if they do, they cannot get an education, health and care plan or a SEND plan? That is creating huge barriers for children with neurodiversity and autism to access school in a safe environment.

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the challenges right across our SEND system—a system that the Secretary of State herself has described as “lose, lose, lose.”

School leaders know that this is a disaster, yet earlier this month the Department updated us all on the work of the workload reduction taskforce. It is not the work of teachers, the taskforce clarifies, to investigate a pupil’s absence. Teachers may do it—it is vital work that needs doing—but it also depends on our amazing support staff.

Labour’s plan to tackle the attendance crisis starts with our smallest children. It includes a childcare system modernised from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school, high-quality early education, a focus on life chances for children—not just on work choices for parents—and high and rising standards right from the start, with early language interventions to identify and remove barriers to learning, and a determination to reform the SEND system, to put money behind children, not lawyers, and to tackle issues before they hold children back, with a new focus on primary numeracy so that children love maths at six, never mind at 16—excellence for everyone; not for some of our children but for all of them. There will be free breakfast clubs in every primary school, because it is about the club, not just the breakfast. Every day, every child, every life and every start.

There will be 6,500 new qualified teachers and a new national voice for our support staff. Ofsted will be reformed and improved. We will end the high-stakes, low-information culture, with annual checks for attendance, safeguarding and off-rolling. There will be mental health councillors in our secondary schools and new community hubs outside them, joining up the information that we have on our children so that every child can be supported between schools and services—every issue caught, shared and addressed. And the cause for which we asked for time today? A law to register and count the children who are out of school.

Labour is clear on how we will fund that package and the change that we need: by ending the tax breaks for private schools and the mega-rich. We will invest in what we most believe in: our children and their futures, excellence for everyone, high and rising standards, and a Britain where background is no barrier to opportunity. The legislation that we will introduce next month, with the House’s permission if today’s motion is agreed to, will be simple: it will be part 3 of the Government’s own Schools Bill from 2022, which provided for a register of children not in school. That is nothing that Conservative Members would not have been prepared to vote for had it been tabled by their own Ministers, so there can be no reason or excuse for Conservative Members who care about this issue not to support the motion today and the Bill next month. They can choose their party or our children. I commend the motion to the House.