Lord Jackson of Peterborough
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support teachers and schools to reduce pupil absenteeism.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, improving school attendance is a top priority for the Government. We are providing schools and teachers with world-leading data tools, empowering them to identify quickly children who are at risk of non-attendance and to put the right support in place. Our 31 attendance hubs have helped 2,000 schools to adopt best practice. Our new regional improvement for standards and excellence advisers will also work closely with schools to reduce absence.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
The Minister will know that the cohort of children who are severely absent—those who miss more than 50% of their classes—which amounts to about 120,000 pupils, are the most at risk of ending up in gang activity and other serious criminality. The previous Government did a good job on tackling this problem, but what assistance are the Government giving to individual schools to collate and use data on absence to develop a plan of action to tackle the most acute attendance problems?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that being absent from school, particularly persistently, not only impacts on your education but puts you in danger and makes you vulnerable to criminal activity in the way he outlined. That is why it is really important that we nip in the bud the attendance problems of those who start being absent before they are persistently absent. Through the Working Together guidance, we now expect that local authority teams will meet schools regularly to agree individual plans for severely absent children to get them back into school and to keep them out of trouble.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, the Institute for Government recently published a report, Reducing School Absence, which concludes that under the last Labour Government, absence rates for secondary school pupils fell by 42%. Its key recommendation is that the most effective way to tackle absence is to bring all parties together—adolescent health, special needs, school disengagement and family support. That is what the last Labour Government did under the Every Child Matters agenda. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that this is the best way to reduce absenteeism, which under the previous Government ballooned to 1.5 million pupils being persistently absent in 2023-24?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right that we have seen big increases in the number of children who are missing school, both those who are persistently absent and those who are severely absent, as I said in my earlier response. My noble friend is right that, particularly to deal with children who are severely absent, you need to bring together a range of properly resourced agencies to work on the individual plans I talked about in the previous answer. That is one of the reasons why we are investing £500 million in children’s social care and in prevention, so that we can ensure that severely absent children are routinely assessed for family help, bringing together those services in the way she outlined.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that children who fail at school, and who know they are failing, are far more likely to be absent? With that in mind, what are we doing about getting proper assessment to help those children, particularly those with special educational needs, without going through a long, expensive and slow identification process?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
For children with special educational needs, it is really important that, as we have discussed previously, those needs are identified early. That is why we have launched new SEND assessment resources and child development training for the early years sector. This Government’s ambition is that all children with special educational needs receive the right support to succeed in mainstream schools where possible. That is what we are focused on. It is what we are engaging with parents and professionals about. It is the change we will ensure so that children are much more likely to succeed and, as the noble Lord said, to stay in school and achieve, with all the benefits that brings for the rest of their lives.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, there is very good evidence that arts, music and sports programmes lead to improvements in school attendance and engagement, especially in at-risk populations. However, state schools have seen a huge reduction in creative subjects over the last 15 years. What plans do the Government have to increase arts and culture provision so that students in state schools have the same opportunities as those in independent schools? Will the Government encourage schools to join the Artsmark programme? Artsmark schools report huge improvements in attendance and engagement from children.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right. The right curriculum, and the breadth of the enriching and enjoyable activities that happen within schools, are certainly important for keeping children there and helping them to learn. Ensuring that we have a curriculum that supports the space to enable those things to happen is one of the reasons why we have the curriculum and assessment review currently being undertaken. But we have not waited for that to provide additional investment—for example, for the national centre related to music—that will help to ensure that more children have the opportunities she talked about.
Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)
Is the Minister aware that many 13 and 14 year-olds who do not turn up on two days a week do not want to go back to a school where they will have to study just eight academic subjects, which is the standard curriculum for comprehensives? Until they have some injections of training and vocational subjects, absenteeism will remain high.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
This is why we need to make sure that the curriculum provides the excellence of subject teaching and knowledge necessary for children to progress in life, and also that it has the opportunity to provide the broad experience for learners that the noble Lord references. There are lots of good examples of schools that, while offering the whole national curriculum, nevertheless also manage to provide other alternatives: more enrichment and more opportunities to learn about the skills that will be necessary in the workplace. I am sure that makes school even more attractive to students.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure my noble friend will know that, in the last academic year, the number of those absent more than 50% of the time went up by a staggering two-thirds—so we have a genuine crisis. I know that my noble friend is too old—
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
I mean that she is too young to remember the school bobby, who turned up at my parents’ house only to find that I had been sent away to a school for the blind. Is it not true that, in some circumstances, we really have to work with the parents, because they have a responsibility as well?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend—despite what he just said about me—is absolutely right. This is where that personalised plan around an individual child—using, where necessary, early help provision, family support and challenge to parents—is absolutely fundamental for those children, who have sometimes completely lost touch with what it means to attend school regularly and learn appropriately. They need that type of intervention—my noble friend is absolutely right.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government have done some excellent work on attendance, and the national roadshows that have been held with schools are to be welcomed. The numbers are improving, but they are not improving quickly for children on free school meals. What will the Government do about that?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
As the noble Baroness knows, there is a differential impact on absenteeism, depending on whether a child has special educational needs or free school meals. So it is really important that, in using the improved data now available to us at a very granular level, we ensure that schools know what is effective in order to reduce absenteeism and, in particular—this was the reason for the roadshows that the noble Baroness identified—can compare themselves with others. Schools with similar intakes perform very differently in tackling absence, which is why we need to make sure that the data is used in a really granular way. To be fair to the noble Baroness, she started that in her time in the department.
The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham
My Lords, as a foster carer for Nottingham city, I am aware that children with higher levels of often complex needs hugely benefit from additional support in smaller integrated learning environments in order to stay motivated and engaged. I press the Minister again very particularly: what assessment have the Government therefore made of how the increase in the number of children with significant special educational needs—who now very often remain in large classes, with the disruption that creates for many pupils—is impacting on pupil absenteeism?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate rightly pushes me. This is the reason why, as part of our approach to supporting children with special educational needs, we are keen to ensure that children receive the support they need to succeed where possible in mainstream schools—but that may well involve resourced units within those schools that will enable the smaller, more personalised provision that the right reverend Prelate is talking about. We have made additional capital available, as well as the £1 billion more of additional high needs funding to help to begin that work.