Pupil Absenteeism

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.