School Attendance

Debate between Robert Halfon and Bob Seely

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Twigg. Thank you for your kindness earlier. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for leaving slightly early to get to the vote, as I missed a little of his otherwise excellent speech.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), my constituency neighbour in Essex—we have got Essex man and Essex woman here today—on securing this debate. She has championed this subject and is absolutely right to do so, because we know that regular school attendance is vital for children’s attainment, mental wellbeing and long-term development, and it is crucial that we have a support system in place to ensure that every child attends school every day, ready to learn and thrive.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds talked about the damage of school closures. Wearing my previous hat as Chair of the Education Committee, I spent a huge amount of my time campaigning against school closures, as I thought that everything we are talking about today, both here and in the main Chamber, would come to pass. I have to say that I was opposed significantly by not everyone, but a lot of Members on the Opposition Benches, and of course some—not all, to be fair—of the unions. I thought, at the time, that it would cause significant damage.

The attendance challenge has grown since the start of the pandemic, not only in England but around the world. There is evidence that, post pandemic, some attitudes to absence have changed. There is a greater propensity to keep a child at home with a minor illness such as a cough or a cold, and we can understand why that has happened. We must at least try and recalibrate back to where we were pre-covid, when an attendance of 95% was achieved year after year.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I fully support the idea behind the Bill introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), and indeed the complementary Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond). Will the Minister find the time to meet me to discuss specifically home schooling and how it relates to absenteeism on the Isle of Wight, where we have over three times the national average of home-schooled kids? While I absolutely respect the rights of responsible parents, I worry that especially after covid, some of those home-schooled kids are simply absentee kids from school who are not learning, and who are drifting into isolation, mental health problems or criminality.

[Robert Halfon]

As always, my hon. Friend makes powerful points. I think he speaks not just for some—and I stress some—younger people in his constituency, but also for those across the country. I am not the Schools Minister or the Children’s Minister—I am standing in because of the debate in the main Chamber—but I will mention what my hon. Friend has requested, and I will ask for a meeting with the Schools Minister or the Children’s Minister to discuss the important issues that he has raised.

Contrary to what has been suggested by the shadow Minister, we have started to see some progress, although there is a long way to go. There were 380,000 fewer pupils persistently absent or not attending school in 2022-23 than in 2021-22. Overall absence for the autumn term that has just finished was 6.8%, down from 7.5% in Autumn 2022. That means that, on average, pupils in England are attending school for the equivalent of around a day and a half more across an academic year then they did last year.

It is difficult to make direct comparisons, but we know that absenteeism is a problem not just in the UK, but in other parts of the world too. However, there are signs that our approach is bearing fruit. I mentioned that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford is my constituency neighbour. Absence rates for Essex are very much in line with those of England as a whole, and they mirror the improvements seen nationally in the most recent terms.

We are committed to working with schools and local authorities to drive up attendance rates, and we have a six-point plan to deal with some of the problems. We have set out stronger expectations of the system, including requiring schools to have an attendance policy, appointing attendance champions and expecting local authorities to hold termly meetings with schools to agree individual plans for at-risk children.

We have established an alliance of national leaders from education, children’s social care and allied services to work together to raise school attendance and reduce persistent absence, and the Attendance Action Alliance has pledged to take a range of actions to remove barriers preventing children attending school. The attendance data tool allows early intervention to avoid absences becoming entrenched, and 88% of schools are already taking part in the daily data pilot. We are committed to requiring all schools to share their daily registers as part of the programme.

We have expanded our attendance hubs, which will see almost 2,000 schools supported to tackle persistent absence—reaching around 1 million pupils. We have also launched a campaign to re-emphasise the importance of every school day, not just for learning, but for wellbeing, experiences and friendships too. From September, our attendance mentor pilot will be extended to 10 new areas. Trained mentors will work with more than 10,000 persistently and severely absent children and their families to help them back to school.

Both the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and the shadow Minister rightly talked about mental health and special educational needs. We are now spending £10.5 billion on special educational needs—that is a 60% increase since 2019. The Children’s Minister has a lot of work under way on this, including a plan for special educational needs which will standardise education, health and social care plans, so that we end the postcode lottery that my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds mentioned.

The hon. Member for City of Durham also asked several questions. As I understand it—I will ask the School Buildings Minister to discuss the issue that she raised—the Department for Education has contacted the Durham research team, offering to discuss the report and clarify areas of mission. We have worked closely with St Leonard’s to provide additional spaces for learning and to put extra education provisions in place. All pupils at St Leonard’s have been in face-to-face education since October and additional educational support is available for those pupils due to sit exams next year, with specialist facilities being sourced at other providers in the local area and transport being provided for pupils. Nevertheless, as I have already said, I will ask the School Buildings Minister to talk to her.