Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer of Baroness Barran on 9 March (HL5961), what estimates they have made of the number of children not regularly in school; whether there has been an increase in the number of children absent from school since the COVID-19 pandemic; and whether they will fund local education authorities to maintain registers of children not in school until they can legislate to make such registers a statutory requirement.

School attendance has improved since 2010, but COVID-19 and its aftermath significantly damaged attendance levels. COVID-19 caused higher levels of sickness absence, and exacerbated existing problems with persistent absence, with vulnerable children particularly affected. Attendance is now improving, and the government is committed to returning to pre-pandemic levels and better.

In autumn/spring 2018/19 overall attendance was 96.7%. The current academic year to date attendance is 4.3 percentage points lower at 92.4%.

Local authorities have a statutory duty to make arrangements that enable them to establish, the identities of children in their area who are not receiving a suitable education. To assist with fulfilling this duty, the department expects all local authorities in England to maintain some form of register to help identify these children, in line with our guidance to local authorities on elective home education. This function is funded through existing budgets and resources.

When the suitable legislative opportunity arises to take forward the Children Not in School measures, the department will review and undertake a further new burdens assessment to assess the level of funding required to support implementation of the registers, as well as for the proposed local authority duty to support home educating families.