Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to combat increasing levels of pupil truancy in schools.

Improving attendance remains a top priority for the department as regular school attendance is important for children’s educational progress, for their wellbeing, their safeguarding and for their wider development. Truancy is subset of absence; the largest cause of persistent absence is sickness.

In 2022, the department published stronger expectations of schools, trusts, governing bodies and local authorities in the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance. This guidance is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1099677/Working_together_to_improve_school_attendance.pdf.

The department now expects all schools to appoint a champion, and for local authorities and schools to agree individual plans for persistently absent children. In January 2024, the department launched 18 new attendance hubs, bringing the total to 32, which will see nearly 2,000 schools helped to tackle persistent absence across the country. These hubs will support schools responsible for the attendance of over a million pupils.

At the same time the department also announced an extra £15 million to expand one-to-one attendance mentoring over the next three years, to help 10,000 children struggling to attend school. To help identify children at risk of persistent absence and to enable early intervention, the department has established a timelier flow of pupil level attendance data through the daily attendance data collection. 88% of state funded schools are now signed up to this.

Across all phases, around 380,000 fewer pupils were persistently absent or not attending in 2022/23 than in 2021/22. Daily data for 2022/23 shows school absence of 9.3% in secondary schools, down from 10.0% absent or not attending school for covid related reasons in 2021/22. Further absence data from the school census is available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england.