A leading academy trust boss has backed calls for a crackdown on poor attendance in schools by introducing an ‘awareness course’ for parents of persistently absent pupils.
A new report from The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), in partnership with the Rigby Foundation, found nearly half of parents think it is “reasonable” for a child to miss one in every ten days of school.
The think tank has called for the government to “radically expand the support for parents struggling with absence associated with complex needs, while tackling softening parenting attitudes about the importance of attendance”.
This introduces an awareness course for parents to learn the impact of absence on their children’s learning – similar to a driving awareness course for motorists caught speeding – something the Sunday Times newspaper reported is being considered by government.
Speaking at the report’s launch event, Harris Foundation CEO Sir Dan Moynihan said families “could do with the support to reinforce the fact that parents have agency” as children are increasingly refusing to attend school.
Attendance awareness courses
The CSJ report says the government should introduce a new mandatory attendance awareness course, similar to those for drivers caught speeding, at the beginning of a legal intervention process for unauthorised absence.
Currently parents are issued with an £80 fine to be paid within 21 days. But the CSJ argues this does not directly target improving attendance and rather acts as a deterrent or punishment.
Polling conducted by Whitestone Insight for the CSJ found that almost half of British parents of school-age children (44 per cent) think it is “reasonable” for a pupil to miss one in every 10 days of school.
Two in five secondary school parents (42 per cent) said “most of what my child gets taught in school is unlikely to help them in later life”.
‘They’re adults, they’re in charge’
At the CSJ event, Moynihan said attendance rates across his 55 schools were higher than the national average, despite being in areas with high deprivation.
According to the report, the rise of absence is “starkly uneven”, concentrated in poorer areas and among less affluent children.
Persistent absence – which amounts to missing one in 10 days per year – rose from 10.9 per cent before the pandemic to 22.5 per cent after the pandemic, which the CSJ argues is due to a mutual breakdown of trust between schools and parents, the erosion of perceived value of education, and a more challenging parental landscape.
“One key difference is that pre-pandemic, it would be the adults in the family who would decide whether the child went to school,” Moynihan (pictured left) said, “increasingly today, it’s the child [who] decides whether in many families. There’s a real change in the dynamic there.
He said attendance courses would have “real merit” because “there are some families that could do with the support to reinforce the fact that as parents, they have agency.”
The Harris Foundation supports parents through community hubs, providing uniform or hygiene products, and provides home-academy liaison officers across half of its schools. These work to help parents with issues that could be affecting their child’s attendance, such as housing.
Non-executive director of the Department for Education Kevin Collins said tackling absence was a “fundamental priority”.
“He said absence rates showed a “fractured” relationship between schools and families, and that “we should not flinch from reminding” parents of their responsibilities.
Collins added the DfE wanted to reintroduce “achieving and thriving” to schools in its upcoming Schools Bill, set to be published this Autumn.
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