Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional support she plans to provided to (a) parents and guardians and (b) children to help tackle the root causes of persistent school absences.

Tackling school absence is at the heart of the department’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity. However, 20.7% of children remain persistently absent, missing 10% or more of lessons, and we recognise that supporting parents, guardians and children is vitally important in overcoming this.

This is why the department has published the ’Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, which became statutory in August 2024. The guidance promotes a 'support first' approach, setting clear expectations that schools and local authorities should work with families to address barriers to attendance in a sensitive way. To support parents, we have published a parent-facing version of the guidance and have worked with schools to strengthen communications to parents around attendance.

In addition, backed by £15 million, the government is expanding attendance mentoring to reach 10,000 more children and cover an additional ten areas. This is alongside the commitment to roll out funded breakfast clubs to all primary schools to ensure all children are ready to learn.

Mental health support is particularly important for enabling pupils to attend. The department has provided grants for all schools to train a senior mental health lead. We are also committed to delivering access to specialist mental health professionals in every school.