Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to reduce girls’ school absence rates in (a) Yeovil constituency, (b) Somerset and (c) England.

The 'Working together to improve school attendance' statutory guidance supports the attendance of all children and requires schools and wider services to take a ‘support first’ approach to understand the nature of the individual barriers facing a child’s attendance and put in place appropriate support.

Schools are supported with real-time data and practical toolkits to diagnose drivers of absence, including bespoke attendance targets. Our attendance mentoring programme provides one-to-one support for persistently absent children, both in Somerset and more widely. The national regional improvement for standards and excellence attendance and behaviour hubs support over 3,500 schools with practical advice for improving attendance practice.

Attendance is also supported by wider investment, including rolling out free breakfast clubs in all primary schools and expanding access to specialist mental health professionals in every school.