Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to tackle the absence rate of pupils in secondary schools in England of over 15 per cent.

Being in school and ready to learn is crucial to pupils’ attainment, wellbeing, and wider life chances.

The department's focus is on supporting children and young people to recover from the disruption of COVID-19 through a multi-year programme and has made available almost £5 billion for education recovery. This includes nearly £2 billion of direct funding to schools so they can deliver evidence-based interventions based on pupil needs.

We have also published new guidance, ‘Working together to improve school attendance’, which makes clear the importance of addressing the barriers to attendance through strong multi-agency working at school, multi-academy trust and local authority level.

The department consulted on making this guidance statutory and received broad support. We intend to make this guidance statutory when parliamentary time allows.

The department has brought together an Action Alliance of lead professionals from key frontline services that support families. Members from education, health, justice, the third sector and parent organisations have collectively committed to use their roles and organisations to undertake activities to improve attendance.