“Parents have responsibilities,” Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told an audience at the Centre for Social Justice earlier this year. “One of the things we do as parents that has the biggest impact on our children is making sure they go to school.”
Persistent school absenteeism is one of the central challenges facing the education sector right now. Four years on from the first Covid-19 lockdown, attendance still lags behind pre-pandemic levels. Pupils are considered ‘persistently absent’ if they miss more than 10% of their schooling – as of January 2024, 20.5% of pupils fall into this category and nearly one in five children now regularly miss school. This can have a huge impact on pupils’ development and outcomes: the link between attendance and attainment is well documented.
How should the problem be tackled, then? Well, ask both main parties and you’ll get broadly the same answer: ‘with parents and with schools.’
A Labour government, Phillipson has pledged, would create a national register of home schooled children, harness artificial intelligence to identify absence trends, and expand Ofsted’s remit to review absence during safeguarding checks – all in a bid to tackle persistent absenteeism. It would also bolster mental health support for pupils and fund free breakfast clubs for primary schools to encourage attendance. The Government has responded with its own plans: 18 new ‘attendance hubs,’ £15 million for an attendance mentor scheme, and a new publicity campaign for parents. The push to improve school attendance is firmly a fixture of the current education policy landscape.
