Pupil Absenteeism

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.