The number of children who persistently miss school is “insane”, experts warned on Thursday as data shows more than a quarter of secondary school pupils in parts of London regularly fail to attend.
The number of pupils classed as persistently absent — missing at least a day a fortnight — spiralled during Covid and remains above pre-pandemic levels.
Education leaders have called for schools to re-think the way they tackle persistent absence in a bid to take control of the issue.
Theresa Allotey, founder of Meliora High School, an alternative provision for students persistently absent in Enfield, said: “The way we have been doing it clearly isn’t working — we need some new approaches.”
She added: “Sometimes Covid is relied upon as a crutch to justify why things aren’t quite as they were before. When we have got back to normal on so many other things why can’t we get back to normal with school?”
More than one in five children in England are now classed as persistently absent from school, Government figures show. Before the pandemic, the figure was one in 10.
Evening Standard analysis of the latest provisional data found that in in Camden, Croydon and Westminster more than a quarter of secondary school pupils were persistently absent. The highest rate was in Croydon at 27.1 per cent, against the national average of 25.3 per cent. The data also highlights huge variations across the capital, with the primary school persistent absent rate in Newham (20.9 per cent) almost double that in Richmond (10.8 per cent).
