Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department’s statutory guidance entitled Children missing education: statutory guidance for local authorities, published August 2024, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of specifying the (a) role and (b) responsibility of local authorities for providing education to children who are absent from mainstream education due to long term illness.

Local authorities do have a statutory duty under section 19 of the Education Act 1996 to arrange suitable and (normally) full-time education for children of compulsory school age who, because of exclusion, illness or other reasons, would not receive suitable education without such provision. This means that where a child cannot attend school because of a physical or mental health need, and cannot access suitable full-time education, the local authority is responsible for arranging suitable alternative provision.

The department sets out guidance to support local authorities to fulfil their section 19 duty available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/657995f0254aaa000d050bff/Arranging_education_for_children_who_cannot_attend_school_because_of_health_needs.pdf.

The department has also issued statutory guidance for local authorities that makes clear their role and responsibilities for ’Children missing education’ which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/children-missing-education.

This statutory guidance sets key principles to enable local authorities in England to implement their legal duty to identify, as far as it is possible to do so, children missing education and get them back into education.