Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps is she taking increase school attendance among children who are living in poverty.

Today, 4.3 million children are living in poverty in this country. Tackling child poverty is at the heart of breaking down barriers to opportunity and improving the life chances for every child. For too many children, living in poverty robs them of the opportunity to learn and to prosper.

To support the educational outcomes of disadvantaged pupils, pupil premium funding in the 2024/25 financial year has increased to over £2.9 billion. Pupil premium funding is allocated to eligible schools based on the number of pupils who are recorded as eligible for free school meals (FSM) or have been recorded as eligible in the past six years (referred to as Ever 6 FSM), as well as children who are looked after by the local authority or have been adopted from or left care. In line with the pupil premium Menu of Approaches, schools can spend their pupil premium on evidence-based strategies to support attendance.

This government will ensure school is the best place to be for every child, with free breakfast clubs in primary schools so that every child is on time and ready to learn, better mental health support through access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, and inclusion for children with special educational needs and disabilities within mainstream settings right across the age range.

Backed by £15 million, the department is also expanding its investment into attendance mentoring to reach 10,000 more children and cover an additional ten areas. These attendance mentors will provide one-to-one targeted support for persistently and severely absent pupils.

There is an absence epidemic in this country, with one in five children persistently absent. The department’s ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ statutory guidance sets a clear expectations that where pupils face additional barriers which affect their attendance, schools should work with these families and put support in place to help them to attend. The guidance can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66bf300da44f1c4c23e5bd1b/Working_together_to_improve_school_attendance_-_August_2024.pdf. Where the barriers are outside of the school’s control, all local partners should work together to support pupils and parents to access support to ensure regular attendance.