Maintained Schools: Term Dates

Lord Laming Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

That has not been drawn to my attention, but I am certainly willing to look into it and perhaps come back to the noble Lord.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, I know the Minister shares my view that it is one thing to have the schools open, but it is another to make sure that all the pupils are there. What are the Government doing to try to reduce the amount of absenteeism in schools, especially of vulnerable children?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: if children are not in school, they cannot learn. Although levels of absenteeism are marginally better this year than last, they are still considerably worse than before the pandemic, with around 1.6 million children—more than one in five—missing at least one day per fortnight. This is why we need a wide-ranging approach to tackling absenteeism. We need to build on the detailed data we now have available to us. We need to expect schools to focus, before a child becomes persistently absent, on the reasons why they are absent and what intervention may be necessary. We need schools to learn from those who are tacking this issue much more effectively. We are investing £15 million in expanding the specialist attendance mentoring programme for persistently absent pupils. We need to make sure that the new guidance issued in August is being followed appropriately, because this is a fundamental issue on which we need to make progress. Children need to be in school in order to learn, and in order to prevent the disruption to others in class that happens when children are absent.