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

Vicky Ford Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

This Bill on school attendance is important to our nation’s children and to their futures. At time when there is so much discord in politics, it has been truly uplifting to know that, when it comes to our children, even Members of Parliament can agree with each other and do the right thing. I want to start by thanking all colleagues, from all parties, for their unanimous support for the Bill at every stage of its proceedings through the House.

As a mum, I always wanted my children to have a wide range of choices available to them, so that they could choose the best opportunities for their future. Getting five good GCSEs gives a teenager a lot of choices. With these grades, they can do A-levels, T-levels or an apprenticeship. Without them, choices suddenly become much more limited. One of the schools in my constituency analysed the performance of two identical cohorts of students. Of the group who had attended 95% to 100% of the time, 82% got five good GCSEs; about five in 30 children did not. Of the group who had attended between 90% and 95% of the time, only 68% of them got good GCSEs; that means that 10 out of 30 did not get good GCSEs. That shows how even a tiny drop in attendance can have long-lasting consequences for our children.

The Children’s Commissioner found that three quarters of children who were rarely absent from school received five good grades at GCSE including in English and maths, but of those who are persistently absent—missing 10% or more of their school time—only one in three were meeting that standard. For children who were severely absent, only one in 20 were doing so. That is why we are all so correct in being so concerned about the rise in school absences.

Before I speak about absences, I want to say that we should be extraordinarily proud of our nation’s young people. Children in England now rank 11th in the world for maths and 13th for reading, whereas back in 2010, when today’s school leavers were just starting out in reception, the same league tables placed the equivalent cohort of children 27th for maths and 25th for reading. I am really proud that every single school in my Chelmsford constituency is now ranked “good” or “outstanding”; 14 years ago under Labour, one in three kids in my constituency had to go to schools that were not even “good”. Let us be proud of our kids, but absence is a really challenging issue.

The pandemic significantly disrupted school attendance levels, not just here but across the world. About one in five pupils in England are still missing the equivalent of half a day or more of lessons a week. That means that over a million children are missing significant amounts of their education. That is limiting not only their education but their choices, their chances to make friendships and take part in enrichment activities, as well as so many other issues that are so important for their behaviour.

We know that the reasons for absence from school can be multiple and complex. Such issues include support for those with special educational needs and disabilities, anxiety or mental health issues. If a child’s SEND needs are unmet, that can lead to their missing out on their education.

Changes in attitudes towards minor ailments may be another driving force behind the rise in absences. I say to parents, who are now much more likely to keep their children at home for minor illnesses such as coughs or colds than before the pandemic, that they should please be aware that in most cases children are better off at school even if they have a minor ailment. For the most vulnerable pupils, regular attendance is also a really important protective factor. That is why I was very concerned to hear from an expert on alternative provision that attendance has dropped below 60% for the first time in some of the settings he covers.

We know that regular absence from school can expose young people to harms such as being drawn into crime or serious violence. Some commentators have noted that absence is higher among children on free school meals, but one multi-academy trust leader I spoke to who had done a lot of research at his school suggested that was not the case for all ethnic groups. Those schools he looked at with a higher proportion of pupils with English as a second language had a much higher level of attendance than school cohorts with a higher proportion of British white students. That really needs further investigation.

Another head of a multi-academy trust with schools in my area said there had been an uptick in poor attendance particularly among girls in years 8 to 10. Many other school leaders have confirmed similar trends and suggested that that may be linked to lower mental wellbeing and self-esteem. Those of us who attended Tuesday’s Westminster Hall debate on the impact of social media and screen time—particularly on teenagers and particularly on girls—noted the link between poor mental health among teenage girls and social media, and the further link between poorer mental health and higher anxiety and missing school. It is deeply concerning. There have also been stories in the press recently about the links, in some families, between the increase in hybrid working and children missing school. As a mum, I completely understand how much more difficult it must be to persuade a sometimes reluctant child to go to school if you yourself are working from home on the day in question.

All those issues are important, but my Bill will make a significant difference. It will mean that every council will have to use its services to help to remove the barriers faced by some children. It will mean that every school in the country will need to publicise a detailed attendance policy and share it with parents, pupils and carers. All schools and local authorities will have to follow best practice guidance on school attendance, which has put a great deal of emphasis on the importance of early help and multidisciplinary support. We know that some children and some parents face specific challenges when it comes to school attendance, such as transport needs or special educational needs, and the guidance covers those in detail.

Schools will be required to have a named attendance champion, and families will be aware of the expectations incumbent on them before choosing secondary schools. Local authorities will need to meet representatives of each school regularly, and together they will need to discuss cases in which multi-agency support is needed. In that event they will need to work with the agencies to provide that support, especially in cases of persistent or severe absence. The Bill provides a “support first” approach for families to help to ensure that children attend school regularly.

This is very simple but crucial legislation. I hope it will help to transform the lives of all children and young people; I hope it will reduce the unfairness whereby different amounts of support are available to families in different parts of the country by providing for a more consistent approach; and I hope it will open up a new conversation on the timings of holidays. I entirely understand the pressure on families to take time off for family holidays in term time because it is generally much cheaper, but if a child does miss out on school for that reason, it will have an impact on that child’s education and life choice, and it will not help the child in the long term.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s Bill, and I agree with her that attendance is vital to a child’s education. She has made an important point about the effect that going on holiday in term time can have on an individual pupil, but does she agree that if pupils are missing, that will have an effect on the rest of the class, and that it is not fair on the teacher or the support staff who may have to work extra hard to ensure that the child who was missing can catch up without the whole class being affected?

[Vicky Ford]

As ever, my hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. Some children need to take time off school because, for instance, they have appendicitis and are having an operation. Teachers understand that, and will work with children in that position to help them to catch up. However, we are now seeing an increasing number of children taking time off school—perhaps because it is a Monday or a Friday and they are extending a weekend and perhaps because a parent is working from home. It is impossible for the teachers to help so many children to catch up. They just cannot, much as they would want to. All those missed afternoons and missed mornings add up to a loss of learning. Not only does that hit children’s abilities to get good GCSEs, but teachers have explained to me that if it happens in the early years it can become an ongoing behaviour. We might think, “Oh, it really doesn’t matter, they’re not in an exam year,” but it builds in the habit and it builds in with the class, so it is crucial.

In order to try to solve the holiday issue, I would like to see schools use the powers they already have to vary their term times a bit, which might give more families the opportunity to avoid peak season options. Perhaps we will see more regional changes: for example, different parts of Germany have slightly staggered school holidays so that not all the country is trying to go to the beach at the same time. I have discussed with some of the headteachers in my constituency whether we could have an Essex approach.

We had a slightly different February half-term in Essex: our Essex children had their February half-term a week after the rest of the country, which gave families a bit more flexibility. Having a regional approach meant that, for families who had primary schools kids at one school and secondary school kids at another, the family school holidays still overlapped. I would like to see more work done by schools with their local authorities to see whether they can give a bit more of that flexibility.

Coming back to the Bill, I say a big thank you to all the right hon. and hon. Members who took time to sit on the Bill Committee and to the Education Committee for its support. The Children’s Commissioner deserves an enormous amount of thanks for the work she has done on this issue, and particularly from me for the roundtable of real experts that she brought together, including children’s mental health charities, multi-academy trusts, local authority experts and others in this area. The Centre for Social Justice has also looked in depth at the impact that missing school is having on our children. I also thank the Schools Minister, especially for coming to visit a school in Chelmsford to hear directly from staff and students about this issue, and I thank the exceptional team at the Department for Education, as well as the staff in this House, for their very hard work on the Bill.

To conclude, we know that, for most children, the best place to be is in school, where they are surrounded by the support of their friends and teachers. We know that children will invariably fall behind if they miss time in the classroom, no matter how much teachers and others try to help them to catch up. We know that going to school is important not just for our children’s education, but for their wellbeing, wider development and mental health. Sadly, we also know that for many children the pandemic brought loneliness, loss of communication, loss of face-to-face time with their friends and loss of laughter—and for some children, those losses have had a lasting impact. The Bill will not be a magic wand, and it will not undo all the harms caused by covid, but it is a very firm step in a happier and more positive direction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Ford]

With the leave of the House, I again thank everybody who has taken part during the passage of this Bill. I may have been a little modest. This is a very short Bill—it is only a couple of pages long—but the guidance that it will make statutory is enormously detailed and wide-ranging. That is why making that guidance statutory was the No. 1 recommendation of the Education Select Committee, and the No. 1 ask from the Children’s Commissioner and many others.

I remember the Opposition day debate to which the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) referred. I remember asking the shadow Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), whether she would support my Bill on that day, and she declined to do so. We have introduced this legislation in the form of a private Member’s Bill; in order to do so, I had to join the back of the queue, because my name did not come up in the ballot. I remind colleagues that not just one but four Labour Members were in the top five of the ballot for private Members’ Bills. If the Labour party really wanted to do something great for our children, it would have taken the Bill through this route itself. Labour Members say that they have a plan for our children, but we can see that they have not. Otherwise, they would have delivered this Bill themselves.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Congratulations to the right hon. Lady.