Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department’s statutory guidance entitled Children missing education - Statutory guidance for local authorities, updated August 2024, when she plans to update the guidance; and if she will make it her policy to regularly update the guidance to adapt to emerging trends and needs as indicated by new data collected.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department conducted a call for evidence from 18 May to 20 July 2023 on ‘Improving support for children missing education’ to understand the sector’s current approach to identifying and supporting children missing education (CME), and to inform any changes which will help us to improve this support.
To address current challenges in identifying and supporting CME, the department has already:
Following the call for evidence, the department is reviewing its CME guidance with a view to publishing an updated version in due course.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to support schools to develop timetabling expertise in order to enable more flexible working patterns for teachers (a) who are mothers and (b) generally.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department is taking action to support and promote flexible working in schools for all teachers and leaders. We have published non-statutory guidance alongside our flexible working toolkit, which includes practical resources to help leaders implement flexible working and to support school staff to request it. We have also clarified the position on planning, preparation and assessment time, so that schools are aware that teachers can use this time more flexibly. This can include taking it in a single chunk of time, or working from home, where the school deems this operationally feasible.
The department is also funding support for teachers and school leaders. We are delivering a culture change programme, focused on embedding flexible working in schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs). This programme allows schools to access support to overcome the perceived or practical barriers they face to implementing flexible working. This includes peer support provided by flexible working ambassador schools and MATs, and the delivery of supportive webinars, including several specifically addressing how timetabling can support flexible working.
Our programme also offers practical support on combining flexible working with life as a parent and has a range of tailored content such as a webinar on making a flexible working request when returning from parental leave.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department’s statutory guidance entitled Children missing education: statutory guidance for local authorities, published August 2024, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of specifying the (a) role and (b) responsibility of local authorities for providing education to children who are absent from mainstream education due to long term illness.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Local authorities do have a statutory duty under section 19 of the Education Act 1996 to arrange suitable and (normally) full-time education for children of compulsory school age who, because of exclusion, illness or other reasons, would not receive suitable education without such provision. This means that where a child cannot attend school because of a physical or mental health need, and cannot access suitable full-time education, the local authority is responsible for arranging suitable alternative provision.
The department sets out guidance to support local authorities to fulfil their section 19 duty available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/657995f0254aaa000d050bff/Arranging_education_for_children_who_cannot_attend_school_because_of_health_needs.pdf.
The department has also issued statutory guidance for local authorities that makes clear their role and responsibilities for ’Children missing education’ which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/children-missing-education.
This statutory guidance sets key principles to enable local authorities in England to implement their legal duty to identify, as far as it is possible to do so, children missing education and get them back into education.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to take steps to help minimise the potential impact of prosecutions for child truancy from school on mothers.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Absence is one of the biggest barriers to success for children and young people. Missing school regularly is harmful to a child’s attainment, safety and physical and mental health, limiting their opportunity to succeed. This government is committed to improving school attendance through our ‘support-first’ approach which seeks to foster strong relationships between families, schools, local authorities and other relevant local services. This ensures that support is made available at an early stage to help children to improve their school attendance. This approach is set out in our statutory attendance guidance, which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance.
Schools, local authorities and other partners should always work together to understand and remove the barriers to attendance. The guidance, which came into effect last August, specifically underlines the importance of working in partnership with families. It also details when Notices to Improve should be issued as a final opportunity for a parent to engage in support and improve attendance before legal intervention is pursued.
The decision to prosecute rests solely with the local authority, but paragraph 164 of the guidance sets out factors for their consideration, including public interest tests and equalities considerations.
The department’s attendance guidance is based on best practice and was introduced following full public consultation.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of prosecutions for child truancy from school on mothers.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Absence is one of the biggest barriers to success for children and young people. Missing school regularly is harmful to a child’s attainment, safety and physical and mental health, limiting their opportunity to succeed. This government is committed to improving school attendance through our ‘support-first’ approach which seeks to foster strong relationships between families, schools, local authorities and other relevant local services. This ensures that support is made available at an early stage to help children to improve their school attendance. This approach is set out in our statutory attendance guidance, which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance.
Schools, local authorities and other partners should always work together to understand and remove the barriers to attendance. The guidance, which came into effect last August, specifically underlines the importance of working in partnership with families. It also details when Notices to Improve should be issued as a final opportunity for a parent to engage in support and improve attendance before legal intervention is pursued.
The decision to prosecute rests solely with the local authority, but paragraph 164 of the guidance sets out factors for their consideration, including public interest tests and equalities considerations.
The department’s attendance guidance is based on best practice and was introduced following full public consultation.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the children who will now receive free school meals will also be eligible for the Holiday Activities and Food Programme.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government has taken another step towards delivering our Plan for Change with our announcement that all children in households in receipt of Universal Credit will be eligible for free school meals (FSM) from September 2026. This unprecedented step will put £500 back into families’ pockets and lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty, breaking down barriers to opportunity and tackling the scar of child poverty across our country.
Giving children access to a nutritious meal during the school day also leads to higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes, meaning children get the best possible education and the best chance to succeed in work and life.
The government remains committed to the holiday activities and food (HAF) programme to ensure children can benefit from enriching activities and healthy meals during the school holidays too. Local authorities already have flexibility to use up to 15% of their HAF funding to provide free or subsidised holiday club places for children who are not in receipt of benefits-related FSM, but who the local authority believe could benefit from HAF provision.
We are providing more than £200 million funding for the HAF programme this year. Further to the spending review, once the departmental business planning process has concluded, we will confirm details of HAF funding beyond the current financial year.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of introducing school-based whole family support practitioners to support the SEND system.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
This government wants to create a high-quality system that places children and families at the centre of its design, providing meaningful and consistent support for families as their needs change over time.
Schools, colleges, early years and childcare settings, and other educational providers, including alternative provision, all have a pivotal role to play in safeguarding children and promoting their welfare. Their insight and co-operation are vital to the successful delivery of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. People working in education settings play an important role in building relationships, identifying concerns and providing direct support to children.
The Children’s Social Care National Framework sets out the purpose, principles and enablers of good practice and the outcomes that should be achieved. The guidance describes what everyone working with families should do and helps everyone come together with a clear vision for how to transform the support that families receive.
Services should prioritise supporting the whole family, recognising that problems do not exist in silos and are often interconnected and intergenerational. Intervening to provide support at the earliest opportunity can help prevent challenges from escalating and improve outcomes.
Family hubs play an important role helping families access vital services to improve the health, education and wellbeing of children, young people and their families. As part of the family hubs’ ‘Start for Life’ programme, there are now over 400 family hubs open across 88 local authorities, creating a welcoming place where families with children aged 0 to 19, or up to 25 with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), can be connected to a wide range of services.
Programme guidance outlines the minimum expectation that local authorities should be delivering in their family hubs for SEND support Family Hub Service Expectations.
This support includes the staff in the family hub being knowledgeable about the SEND services available and being able to connect families to SEND services within the family hub network.
Over the last three years, many of the local authorities on the programme have chosen to focus on improving SEND services, bringing local offers together in one place and funding early identification/intervention on speech, language and communication needs.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department plans to take to help students studying classroom-based electrical technical diplomas transition into the electrical workforce.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is looking at ways of improving the transition rate from further education (FE) courses into construction sector jobs. This includes through the defunding of low-quality courses through the qualifications review.
The department is also working to find ways to narrow the practical experience gap that the industry reports is preventing them from employing people directly after achieving an FE qualification. We will likely need alternative bridging provision for some occupations for those completing FE courses. We are working with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and competency bodies to improve the learner journey and bridge the gap between achieving qualifications and being competent to begin work.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of work by third-sector organisations to (a) support families of children struggling with school attendance and (b) tackle the root causes of low school attendance.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government is committed to tackling school absence, including through our attendance guidance, our national enforcement framework and engagement with schools, local authorities and the third sector.
The ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance was developed following government consultation and using effective practice from within the sector. It built on what schools, trusts and local authorities were already successfully doing to improve attendance, particularly in above-average areas of deprivation.
The guidance was first published in 2022 in non-statutory form to give schools and local authorities time to embed the expectations. Since the guidance was published, attendance hubs have offered support to around 2,000 schools to improve their attendance practice, and every local authority in the country has been offered attendance adviser support to help them implement the expectations. Prior to the guidance becoming statutory, a large majority of leaders reported that they either knew a bit about the guidance or were familiar with the details, and almost all of them reported that their school monitors pupil attendance data. A majority of leaders said that their school has a single point of contact at the local authority, and at least half said they hold targeting support meetings with them.
An updated statutory version of the guidance was published in August 2024, and the department will keep its effectiveness under review. Since August 2024, every state-funded school is required to share its attendance data, which is published every fortnight. Thanks to the hard work of the sector, we have seen positive initial progress in attendance rates, although there is further to go. The latest published statistics show that the rate of persistent absence (pupils who miss 10% or more of their possible sessions) was 18.6% over the current academic year, which is a 2.0 percentage point improvement compared to the equivalent point last academic year.
We recognise the valuable role that third-sector organisations can play in supporting families of pupils with barriers to attendance and in tackling the root causes of low attendance. Our ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance is clear that both schools and local authorities should work with the voluntary and community sector, amongst other partners, in removing the barriers to attendance that families experience and in facilitating multi-disciplinary support.
The guidance promotes a support-first model and is clear that all partners should always work together to understand the barriers to attendance. However, where that support is not successful, not appropriate (for example, term-time holidays), or not engaged with, the law protects pupils’ right to an education. The guidance outlines a role for legal intervention based on effective practice within the sector. In a public consultation in 2022, 71% of local authority employees and 59% of school and academy trust employees and governors or trustees strongly or somewhat agreed with the proposed national thresholds for the circumstances in which a penalty notice must be considered, which were subsequently adopted last August.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the implementation across (a) schools and (b) local authorities of its working together to improve school attendance guidance; and whether she has plans to review the guidance.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government is committed to tackling school absence, including through our attendance guidance, our national enforcement framework and engagement with schools, local authorities and the third sector.
The ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance was developed following government consultation and using effective practice from within the sector. It built on what schools, trusts and local authorities were already successfully doing to improve attendance, particularly in above-average areas of deprivation.
The guidance was first published in 2022 in non-statutory form to give schools and local authorities time to embed the expectations. Since the guidance was published, attendance hubs have offered support to around 2,000 schools to improve their attendance practice, and every local authority in the country has been offered attendance adviser support to help them implement the expectations. Prior to the guidance becoming statutory, a large majority of leaders reported that they either knew a bit about the guidance or were familiar with the details, and almost all of them reported that their school monitors pupil attendance data. A majority of leaders said that their school has a single point of contact at the local authority, and at least half said they hold targeting support meetings with them.
An updated statutory version of the guidance was published in August 2024, and the department will keep its effectiveness under review. Since August 2024, every state-funded school is required to share its attendance data, which is published every fortnight. Thanks to the hard work of the sector, we have seen positive initial progress in attendance rates, although there is further to go. The latest published statistics show that the rate of persistent absence (pupils who miss 10% or more of their possible sessions) was 18.6% over the current academic year, which is a 2.0 percentage point improvement compared to the equivalent point last academic year.
We recognise the valuable role that third-sector organisations can play in supporting families of pupils with barriers to attendance and in tackling the root causes of low attendance. Our ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance is clear that both schools and local authorities should work with the voluntary and community sector, amongst other partners, in removing the barriers to attendance that families experience and in facilitating multi-disciplinary support.
The guidance promotes a support-first model and is clear that all partners should always work together to understand the barriers to attendance. However, where that support is not successful, not appropriate (for example, term-time holidays), or not engaged with, the law protects pupils’ right to an education. The guidance outlines a role for legal intervention based on effective practice within the sector. In a public consultation in 2022, 71% of local authority employees and 59% of school and academy trust employees and governors or trustees strongly or somewhat agreed with the proposed national thresholds for the circumstances in which a penalty notice must be considered, which were subsequently adopted last August.