Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what (a) statutory requirements and (b) guidance exist for (i) local authorities and (ii) schools to prevent children with special education needs becoming Children Missing Education.

The department recognises that barriers to attendance are wide and complex, and this is particularly true for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Addressing these requires a support-first approach and strong relationships between families, schools, local authorities and other relevant local services.

The department has published the ’Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, which is statutory for both schools and local authorities. The guidance promotes a 'support-first' approach and sets out attendance expectations for schools, local authorities and parents. The guidance also provides detail on additional support for pupils with SEND. Where a pupil is not attending due to unmet or additional needs, it requires schools, local authorities and wider services to work together to access and provide the right support to improve attendance.

For pupils registered at a special school, the School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024 outline that schools must not delete the names of children from the school roll unless they receive approval from the local authority who made the initial arrangements for their education.

The department has also published statutory guidance for local authorities on children missing education (CME). This guidance sets out key principles to enable local authorities in England to implement their legal duty to identify CME, as far as it is possible to do so, and get them back into education. The guidance outlines that local authorities should consider the reasons why children go missing from education, and the circumstances that can lead to this happening, when developing policies and procedures. Moreover, the guidance highlights that schools do have a safeguarding duty in respect of their pupils, and as part of this, should investigate any unexplained absences.