Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle school absences among young carers.

The department wants to ensure that young carers have the best life chances by supporting them in their education. The department recognises that absence from school is almost always a symptom of wider needs and barriers that a family are facing. It is often also the best early indication of need in a family that may not be in contact with other services.

The department’s expectations of local authorities and schools, as set out in the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, were made statutory on 19 August 2024. The ‘support first’ ethos of the attendance guidance is that pupils and families, including young carers, should receive holistic, whole-family support to help them overcome the barriers to attendance they are facing. This includes holding regular meetings with the families of pupils who the school, and/or local authority, consider to be vulnerable to discuss attendance and engagement at school. Schools are expected to recognise that absence is a symptom and that improving pupil’s attendance is part of supporting the pupil’s overall welfare.

Young carers are also now part of the school census, which will improve their visibility in the school system, allowing schools to better identify and support their young carers. This will provide an annual data collection to establish long term trends. Separately, the department also publishes daily attendance data fortnightly and will continue to monitor the quality of data on young carers that is collected via the school register for consideration to include in the daily data collection in the future.

Schools can also use pupil premium funding to support other pupils with identified needs, including young carers. Pupil premium funding has increased to over £2.9 billion for the 2024/25 financial year.