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

Jo Gideon Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 2nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) on bringing forward this really important Bill. Being around teachers and friends in a school or college environment is the best way for pupils to learn and reach their potential. Time in school also keeps children safe and provides access to extracurricular activities and pastoral care.

The data that we have on school attendance includes children who are persistently absent—those who miss at least 10% of sessions, which is equivalent to about one afternoon every week. In spring 2023, that applied to 21% of all children, or an astonishing 1.5 million students. Children who are severely absent miss over 50% of lessons—they are absent more often than they are present—and in spring 2023, at least 140,000 children were severely absent. Compared with pre-pandemic school records, the number of children who are severely absent has increased by 133%.

Something has to happen: we have to have a child-centric approach where the child’s voice is heard, which will help improve attendance. I am glad to hear that the attendance mentors scheme has been expanded to include Stoke-on-Trent, providing one-to-one mentoring support to pupils over a three-year period. Such schemes to tackle the factors behind non-attendance, such as bullying, mental health issues or the feeling of just being too far behind make a significant difference, as does the tutoring aspect of that scheme. However, it only reaches at most 1% of severely absent pupils, which does not represent a serious response to this unfolding crisis in our education system. We must act now to return those children to the classroom. Every day that we wait is a day that pushes them farther away from the education they deserve.

In Stoke-on-Trent, we have the highest number of looked-after children of any local authority—children who may have lacked a family support network—as well as those who have to deal with difficult circumstances at home, such as caring responsibilities for a parent or sibling. All of those children need to be in full-time education and to be provided with extra support. Some excellent work is happening in Stoke to support children who may come from those challenging backgrounds: for instance, City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College has an area that provides warm clothes and coats to children, because no child should ever be too cold to be able to learn.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on youth affairs, and have heard directly from young people why they sometimes feel that school is not relevant. They say that the curriculum does not meet their needs: it does not include important subjects such as financial and enterprise education, or practical skills such as preparing food and preparing them for the jobs of the future. Every day of education matters, and failure to keep children in the classroom is storing up untold problems for the future, so I absolutely endorse the effort that this Bill is making to strengthen local authorities’ powers, encouraging them to work with schools and instil a desire to bring every child that we can back into school.