Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help improve school attendance.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

Tackling absence is at the heart of the government’s mission is to break down barriers to opportunity. The latest data shows that we are making progress, with children spending 3.13 million more days in school than last year. The department continues to work directly with academy trusts and local authorities to support and challenge them on improving attendance in their schools and to reduce variation in attendance outcomes. We are providing schools with market-leading, artificial intelligence-powered data tools to help them target their efforts most effectively.

Alongside this, we have established 31 attendance hubs, led by schools with strong attendance practice, to offer support to around 2000 schools, and published an attendance toolkit to give schools practical advice on how to diagnose their attendance problem and implement great practice.

Attendance is priority for the new regional improvement for standards and excellence teams. Supported by over £20 million, these teams will offer both mandatory, targeted intervention for schools identified by Ofsted as needing to improve and a universal service, acting as a catalyst for a self-improving system for all schools.

The department recently announced an additional investment of £15 million to expand mentoring, which will see at least 10,800 secondary school pupils supported to improve their attendance.