The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, was accused of being “flippant” and unhelpful by school leaders, after suggesting that headteachers should personally collect absent pupils to help solve England’s “crisis” in school attendance.
Keegan told Sky News that headteachers “have a duty” to ensure that their pupils were regularly attending school, in the face of statistics showing that attendance rates in England have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Asked about cases of headteachers driving to pupils’ home to collect them in the mornings, Keegan said: “We all have to play our part and actually I have a number of headteachers who work with me on policy and they say that sometimes you just have to do that.
“Sometimes you have to go or you have to text the parent in the morning, sometimes you have to do whatever is possible.”
Whether that was a good use of headteachers’ time, Keegan responded: “It is a good use to have all kids in school. It’s not what we want headteachers doing all of their days. But to be honest, right now, if that works to get somebody in school, it’s worth it. If you feel left behind it makes you feel anxious.”
But school leaders rejected Keegan’s comments, with the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) saying the education secretary’s remarks “demonstrate a worrying lack of understanding of how schools operate”.
