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

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

All that my hon. Friend says is correct. All schools have some form of attendance policy. There is some variation, and one of the things that is happening through this process—the Bill, and our wider work with behaviour hubs and champions, and so on—is to spread best practice. There is real interest from schools in doing so, because they see some of the variation in attendance rates and want to be able to do everything possible. Publicising is part of that. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford said, when going into a secondary school, for example, families will know what the policy is, which itself can be a help in upholding those attendance policies.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

The Bill is great, and I thank my right hon. Friend for it. Is there any evidence that breakfast clubs in primary schools increase attendance? I am slightly confused: if people do not send their children to school, will breakfast clubs make them get up to take their young children to school earlier?

[Damian Hinds]

I think there is. There is some evidence that facilitating things for parents can be helpful, particularly when such things allow parents to go to work and so on. Where I might disagree with the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North is that that is not unique to primary schools; in fact, attendance is more of a problem at secondary school than it is at primary school. We spend quite a lot of money at the moment on supporting breakfast clubs in a targeted way—where they are most needed, where they can make the most difference—and a blanket approach to primary schools would not achieve that. We think it is right to target the money and to take a precise approach, recognising that absence is more of an issue in secondary schools. Through breakfast clubs and other things one might do, one can have more of an impact.

Both clauses will require all schools and local authorities to have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State in relation to school attendance when complying with their duties under the Bill. That guidance, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford said, is the piece entitled, “Working together to improve school attendance”. It is widely supported by schools, trusts and local authorities, and both the Select Committee—I am pleased to welcome its Chair here today—and the Children’s Commissioner for England have previously called for it to be made statutory.

The guidance, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford said, was published in May 2022 to allow schools and local authorities time to implement the expectations. As I said earlier, we have already started seeing an improvement in attendance rates since then. To support the sector in delivering those expectations we have implemented a comprehensive attendance strategy; colleagues will be familiar with important aspects of that. We will of course continue to provide support.

To give an outline of that package, we have offered expert attendance advice support to every local authority in the country and to a number of trusts. We have set up attendance hubs, where lead schools offer support to others to improve their attendance practice—now reaching around 2,000 schools, responsible for 1 million pupils. We have created a new attendance data tool to help identify children at risk of persistent absence and enable early intervention. We convened the attendance action alliance at a national level to bring together system leaders from every part of our society, the public sector and parts of the charitable sector that can have an effect on this important issue. We are piloting attendance mentors who offer one-to-one targeted support to persistently absent pupils; we have recently appointed Mr Rob Tarn to the role of national attendance ambassador; and we have laid regulations that will, from the summer, modernise school registers and introduce a national framework for penalty notices.

I want to respond briefly to points made by colleagues. I say gently to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North that I do not think she really wants to bring politics into this. The truth is that these issues are affecting countries right around the world. They are also affecting the home nations—the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. In Wales a different political party is in government and absence rates in Wales are worse than they are in England, but I recognise that, overall, we share the same ambitions.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North asked about the support available to families. She is quite right to identify the importance of things like mental health support. That is why we have offered the training grant to all state-funded schools; I think 15,000 have now taken up that offer to have a senior mental health lead trained. It is also why we are rolling out mental health support teams across the country. We anticipate getting to 50% of pupils being covered by that by the end of this financial year. Already there is greater prevalence in secondary schools than primary schools. We are also supporting the national school breakfast club programme because of the effects it can have.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury made some very important points. First, I join him in paying tribute to the work of the teachers at the school that he mentioned. I have been blown away when visiting other schools around the country. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford and I have of course had our own visits, and have had the opportunity to see some of the amazingly dedicated work and the lengths that schools and individual members of staff will go to, to try and ensure that every child has the opportunity of a first-class education.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury is right: it is parents’ responsibility to have children go to school. We have also been communicating with parents directly —I think that is important—making sure, for example, that people know about the NHS guidance on when it is necessary to keep a child off school and when it is not. I have already mentioned our support for breakfast clubs.