Coronavirus: Education Setting Attendance and Support for Pupils

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will make a statement on the impact of coronavirus on attendance in education settings and support for pupils to catch-up on lost learning.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Alex Burghart)]

Mr Speaker, I am terribly grateful to you for granting this urgent question during my first week in the job. We would all like to thank school staff for their ongoing dedication to pupils at what has obviously been an extremely difficult time.

Regular school attendance is vital for children’s education, wellbeing and long-term development. I am pleased to report that attendance last week was higher than at the same time last year, with 91.9% of students attending and 99.9% of all state-funded schools open. We know that the impact of coronavirus has been felt strongly in schools. The evidence is clear that being out of education causes significant harm to attainment, life chances, mental health and physical health. Data from the autumn 2020 school census showed that 60% of pupils had some period when they did not attend school in circumstances relating to covid-19 during the autumn term. That represents 33 million days missed, and analysis shows that every day of education missed matters.

That is why this Government are rightly focused on reducing the disruption to education: we have put an end to the self-isolation of whole bubbles; under-18s no longer need to self-isolate after contact with a positive case; secondary pupils were tested on their return, to help limit transmission, and will continue to test this term; and just last week this Government announced the roll-out of vaccinations for all 12 to 15-year-olds. Our communications programme has promoted the importance of attendance and we continue to monitor the data closely.

We are also fully committed to helping pupils to catch up. Our £3 billion investment in recovery includes more than £950 million for schools to best support the most affected children. That will have a material impact in closing gaps that have emerged. We continue to work closely with local authorities and schools to help them re-engage pupils. The Government’s Supporting Families programme continues to work with families where attendance is a significant concern, and we are providing support to tackle mental health issues, which will improve attendance further. That includes £7 million for local authorities to deliver the wellbeing for education recovery programme, and £9.5 million to train senior mental health leads in up to 7,800 schools and colleges. We are also recruiting a team of expert attendance advisers to work with local authorities to help them improve their services and the consistency and quality of their attendance interventions.

The next stage includes a review of time spent in school and 16 to 19 education, and the impact that this could have on helping children and young people to catch up. To support and re-engage the most at-risk pupils, we are investing £45 million in the new safe and alternative provision taskforces, bringing together specialist support in schools and AP settings in serious violence hotspots. We are also joining up support by expanding the role of virtual school heads, which is a wonderful initiative, to cover all children, with a social worker to provide additional support on attendance and attainment for many of the most vulnerable pupils.

The impact of the pandemic has been significant, and this Government continue to act tirelessly to help our children recover their education and wellbeing, with the help of our excellent teaching profession.

[Kate Green]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. Although I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not in his place, I warmly congratulate the Minister on his appointment. I know he will agree with me that nothing is more important than our children’s futures. But during the pandemic the Government have treated children and young people as an afterthought, failing to take the action that teachers, parents, pupils and the Labour party have been calling for to keep children in school. Some 122,000 children were out of school last week. Yesterday, the chief medical officer warned that covid is spreading fastest among secondary-age pupils. When will the Government act to improve ventilation in schools, colleges and universities? Will the Minister explain the Government’s rationale on masks, which saw them required in schools in March but not now, when covid rates are more than 400 times higher?

We welcome the advice of the chief medical officers to roll out the vaccine to 12 to 15-year-olds, but already there are reports of pressure on school nursing services. Will the Minister guarantee that all first doses will have been administered by October half-term?

Shockingly, there are reports that some schools are experiencing anti-vaccination protests. What action is being taken to ensure that no school faces threats and intimidation?

In Education questions on 6 September, the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), hinted that the Government may cease recommending twice-weekly home testing at the end of this month, even though covid continues to spread. Will the Minister reconfirm the plans on testing? How will he ensure that testing at home is carried out, after the drop-off we saw last year?

Even before the latest surge in absences, children had missed an average of 115 days of school. The Conservatives’ paltry recovery plan comes nowhere close to tackling what is needed. Labour’s plan commits to extending the school day to give time for breakfast clubs and new activities, small-group tutoring, expert mental health support, and training for our world-class school staff. Will the Minister commit today to matching Labour’s ambition?

[Alex Burghart]

I thank the hon. Lady for tabling the urgent question and for her opening remarks. I am sure we will not always see eye-to-eye, but we both have a great concern for children in this country and I look forward to working with her on that score. Nevertheless, I do not want to take too many lectures from the Labour party on this subject. We all clearly remember how last year Labour consistently refused to say that schools were safe for children to go back.

The challenges that we currently face are obviously substantial, but great improvements have been made. At the end of the previous term, attendance in school was at 75%; as of Thursday last week, attendance was at 91.9%, with 99.9% of all schools open.[Official Report, 19 Octoberber 2021, Vol. 701, c. 4MC.] That is a tribute to the very hard work done by our health service and the very hard work that is currently being done in schools. I am sure the whole House pays tribute to that work.

Our Department has an absolute determination to be led by the best evidence, and that determination is shared across Government. Probably no one in the Government understands data and evidence bases better than my new boss, the Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi). When the evidence changes and the situation changes, so we change our policy.

The hon. Lady asked about face masks; at some stages in the pandemic we have had face masks in corridors, strict social distancing and bubbles, but the evidence now says that we can move away from that.[Official Report, 19 Octoberber 2021, Vol. 701, c. 4MC.] That is much to the good, because anyone who has ever worked in schools, as I have, will know that it is difficult to conduct proper education when children have their faces covered. I strongly welcome the fact that we have been able to make a change on that score.

Over the course of the pandemic, we have put £3 billion into helping schools and the education recovery. That includes £1.5 billion for evidence-based tutoring programmes that are going to help children, including the most vulnerable, to catch up. I am delighted to have discovered that £220 million is being spent so that vulnerable children can attend holiday activities and food programmes in all local authorities. We have £79 million to support those children who have been suffering with the worst mental health problems—mental health is a dreadful problem that I know many Members will have heard about in their constituency surgeries—and £17 million for mental health and wellbeing training in schools.

The hon. Lady rightly asked about the dreadful anti-vaccination protests we have seen. They are totally unacceptable. The level of intimidation of schools and teachers is abhorrent. I make it absolutely clear to any headteacher or teacher who is watching this that, contrary to some of the things they have been told, legal liability rests not with schools, but with the health service and those providing vaccinations. I thank schools very much for the spaces they have created and the consent forms they have provided, but they should rest assured that it is the health service that is providing these jabs and offering the support. Any school facing intimidation should let the Department know about it so that we can follow it up.

This is a difficult time for education, but things are getting better. They are getting better because of the actions that this Government have taken to roll out one of the best vaccine programmes in the world and to support children and their teachers in school.