Children taking term-time holidays represent “a very small percentage of the attendance problem”, with the government focused on those missing “significant amounts of school on a very regular basis”, the schools minister has said.
At a Department for Education attendance conference near Newcastle this week, Catherine McKinnell MP, the Minister of State for School Standards, praised school leaders for “your leadership, your perseverance, your determination and your commitment, in the face of what is a big challenge”.
The north east has higher absence rates than any other English region.
During breakout sessions, leaders revealed their efforts to bring absences down, including one approach that involved attendance officers starting at 7.30am to listen through voicemails of parents excusing their child, collating data into postcodes and heading out at 8am to visit homes.
Other ideas included asking children to bring in work they were “proud of” on Fridays and running a “wheel of fortune” competition with prizes that included a voucher for a bakery chain.
1.6 million ‘persistently absent’
Much of the national debate about tackling absence has focused on unauthorised term-time holidays.
McKinnell told Schools Week that although it was a “significant issue … it’s a very small percentage of the attendance problem”.
In the year to date, unauthorised holidays make up 0.4 percentage points of an overall absence rate nationally of 6.7 per cent.
The minister said the “big focus” is on children who regularly miss significant amounts of school.
She pointed to the 1.6 million “persistently” absent pupils who missed at least a day a fortnight, and the 150,000 “severely” absent – those who missed more school than they attended.
She said there was no doubt absence was the “education challenge of our generation”.
‘Re-engage communities’
She urged leaders “to take away what you’ve heard today from the speakers, insights, from the conversations, from the anecdotes over coffee, from the support network that you’ve built amongst yourselves, to turn that into tangible, transformative action.
“To build that inclusion, to re-engage with your communities and restore attendance, not just so that we meet targets, but to unlock every child’s opportunity to succeed.”
DfE officials were asked whether its network of attendance hubs would be extended, and how it would integrate with new regional improvement teams.
Simon Blake, the DfE’s regional director for attendance, said: “We love the hub model.
“We see a load of value in investing further in the networks that we’ve got. Watch this space, though. There’s no announcement yet, but we’re certainly thinking.”
Have to ask the question, has anybody in government sat down with the parents of persistently late pupils and got to the bottom of the problem… or are ministers, local authorities and executive heads of schools intentionally ignoring the issues. Issuing fines, harassing families and taking legal measures against children with SEN, undiagnosed mental health issues and school enforced trauma is making the situation worse, not better. You should be campaigning for a better, more inclusive curriculum, improved access to education through technology, a return to vocational and practical methods of assessment, not just exams. There should be legislation proposed – limiting the use of isolations and detentions for minor infractions of behaviour and uniform policies. There most definitely needs to be more definitive legislation surrounding discrimination towards children with SEN or the possibility of SEN. Punishing kids with executive function deficits is destroying families and children’s futures. Start spending less on attendance centres and attendance officers – they have failed to achieve your goals, if anything they are making things worse, and spend more on inclusion and diversity training, SEN support and building a more inclusive School environment.