Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to reduce rates of persistent and severe absence among pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in coastal towns.

Absence is a key barrier to opportunity. For children to achieve and thrive they need to be in school. The department is committed to improving the attendance of all pupils, regardless of background and geographical location.

Thanks to the efforts of the sector, we saw record improvements in 2024/25 with children attending over five million more days compared to the previous year, and 147,000 fewer children persistently absent.

We are tackling barriers to attendance faced by disadvantaged pupils, including through rolling out breakfast clubs to all primaries to ensure all children are on time and ready to learn.

Our attendance mentoring programme provides over 10,000 persistently absent children with one-to-one support covering ten areas with some of the worst attendance rates in the country, including in coastal areas such as Blackpool, Hartlepool, Portsmouth and Hastings.

We have also launched Mission Coastal to transform outcomes for young people in communities where disadvantage is entrenched and educational outcomes remain stubbornly low.