Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage children back into classroom education following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

Being in school is crucial to pupils’ attainment, wellbeing, and wider life chances. The department is focusing on supporting the recovery of children and young people from the disruption of COVID-19 through an ambitious multi-year programme and has made available almost £5 billion for education recovery. This investment includes up to £1.5 billion for tutoring, nearly £2 billion of direct funding to schools so they can deliver evidence-based interventions based on pupil needs, £400 million on teacher training opportunities, and over £800 million for additional hours in 16-19 education.

In addition, the department has brought together an Attendance Action Alliance of lead professionals from key frontline services that support families. Members from education, health, justice, the third sector, and parent organisations have collectively committed to use their roles and organisations to undertake activities to improve attendance.

The department has also published new ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, which makes clear the importance of addressing the barriers to attendance through strong multi-agency working at school, multi-academy trust and local authority level. This guidance intends to ensure greater consistency in the attendance support offered to pupils and families, regardless of where they live, and emphasises the importance of providing attendance support in an earlier and more targeted way to respond to pupils’ individual needs.

To support this, the department has established an automated, more timely flow of attendance data from participating schools’ management information systems. Over 75% of state-funded schools have agreed to voluntarily share this data, which allows participating schools, their trust, and their local authority to see daily attendance for their pupils in order to identify those who need support earlier. This data is also being published fortnightly at a local authority, regional and national level to enable comparisons and early identification and response to emerging attendance trends.