The equivalent of a whole class of children in 758 schools across
the country has not fully returned to lessons since the start of
the Covid pandemic – and the problem may be getting worse,
according to a new analysis by a leading think-tank, in its
latest report Lost but not Forgotten: The Reality of
Severe Absence in Schools Post Lockdown.
Commissioned in response to the Government’s failure to provide
full data since autumn 2020, researchers from the
Centre for Social Justice have found that in around half of
local authorities at least 500 ‘ghost children’ have been
severely absent from school – defined as attending less
than 50 per cent of the time.
Shockingly for the life chances of the most under-privileged
kids, schools with the most disadvantaged intakes are ten times
more likely to have a class of absent children than the most
affluent. For children on free-school meals, the rate of
absence is 3.4 times higher than those without – compounding
inequalities. Of those children in alternative provision, an
eye-watering 25 per cent are severely
absent.
Last year the CSJ revealed almost 100,000 kids had yet to return
to school full time. Worryingly, through conversations with
charities and those working in the sector, the CSJ has found
substantial evidence that these problems have been getting worse
since, not better.
For example, education charity School-Home support – which works
to get kids back into school – found its practitioner workload
increase by 38 per cent in the 2020/2021 academic year.
Similarly, the level of need of children using the charity also
shot up, with the numbers of children and families presenting
with at least two issues shooting up from 65 per cent to 99 per
cent.
The child-abuse threat level has also risen
dramatically this year. School-Home Support received 272
safeguarding alerts in the year 2020/21 compared with 85 in
2019/20. The most dreadful example of violence against
children to occur during the pandemic was the tragic death of
six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, who was brutally
murdered by his parents. He was kept off school and did not
return to school after lockdown ended and schools reopened.
With parents and carers of pupils with low
attendance rates reporting being worried about work,
finances, and wellbeing – without additional support these
problems seem unlikely to abate in the current cost of living
crisis.
While the CSJ welcomes the Government’s initial proposals
announced this week to tackle the problem, its report calls
for the Government to go further and reinvest the underspend from
the National Tutoring Programme into getting these ‘ghost
children’ back into school, while appointing 2,000 school
attendance practitioners to work with families.
MP, Chair of the House of
Commons Education Select Committee, said:
“This is nothing short of a national disaster. The findings of
this report highlight all too clearly the calamitous impact
school closures have had and demonstrates a real social injustice
in our education system. We cannot allow 100,000 so-called ‘ghost
children’ to be lost to the system, or destroy their life chances
in this manner. Fixing this issue must be the number one priority
for the Government.
“Severe absence has spread through our school system like
wildfire. First, the Government must hold correct, and up-to-date
data about this most basic education requirement – attendance.
Second, the attendance practitioner programme must be
dramatically scaled-up to get these children safely back in
school. The Department for Education must make a choice - do we
care about these children or not? Education must not be a
‘survival of the fittest’, but instead, it must look after the
most vulnerable in society.”
Alice Wilcock, Head of Education at the Centre for Social
Justice, said:
“The sheer numbers of children still missing from school is truly
shocking and our evidence suggests that it is getting
worse. Severe absence is often a conveyor belt into
the youth criminal justice system. 90 per cent of young offenders
sentenced to custody have a previous record of being persistently
absent from school, and of the prison population, over half
reported that they regularly truanted.
“The recently introduced attendance advisor programme is welcome,
but the handful so far appointed barely scratch the surface of
the problem. We are calling for the government to use some of the
underspend from its National Tutoring Programme to urgently roll
out attendance practitioners to the schools that need them the
most. We must get severely absent pupils back to
school.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
For media enquiries or a copy of the report please
contact:
Tom Hewitt
Media Intelligence Partners
tom@mippr.co.uk
0203 008 8145
About The Centre for Social Justice
Established in 2004, the Centre for Social Justice is an
independent think-tank that studies the root causes of Britain’s
social problems and addresses them by recommending practical,
workable policy interventions. The CSJ’s vision is to give people
in the UK who are experiencing the worst multiple disadvantages
and injustice every possible opportunity to reach their full
potential.
The majority of the CSJ’s work is organised around five ‘pathways
to poverty’, first identified in our ground-breaking 2007 report
Breakthrough Britain. These are: educational failure; family
breakdown; economic dependency and worklessness; addiction to
drugs and alcohol; and severe personal debt.
Since its inception, the CSJ has changed the landscape of our
political discourse by putting social justice at the heart of
British politics. This has led to a transformation in government
thinking and policy. For instance, in March 2013, the CSJ report
It Happens Here shone a light on the horrific reality of human
trafficking and modern slavery in the UK. As a direct result of
this report, the Government passed the Modern Slavery Act 2015,
one of the first pieces of legislation in the world to address
slavery and trafficking in the 21st century.
Our research is informed by experts including prominent
academics, practitioners and policy-makers. We also draw upon our
CSJ Alliance, a unique group of charities, social enterprises and
other grass-roots organisations that have a proven track-record
of reversing social breakdown across the UK.
The social challenges facing Britain remain serious. In 2022 and
beyond, we will continue to advance the cause of social justice
so that more people can continue to fulfil their potential.
