More than 200,000 children in London have missed at least a tenth of school for the last four years, with experts warning that inadequate solutions are contributing to sluggish improvements in post-Covid attendance rates.
Annual numbers of persistent absentees in London – classed as missing more than 10% of lessons – more than doubled from 109,000 to 228,000 between 2018 and 2022, but have decreased by just 13% since, according to Department for Education data.
Last academic year, nearly 18,000 students were ‘severely absent’ and missed more than half of lessons – rising from below 7,000 in 2018/19 despite the capital’s overall school population declining.
With regular absences linked to lower attainment for disadvantaged students and higher likelihood of being not in education, employment, or training (NEET) after leaving school, experts have warned that the stubborn figures reflect how traditional approaches to attendance are failing families.
Charlotte O’Regan, schools engagement manager at the social mobility charity Sutton Trust, said: “These are all young people that are going to be really struggling moving into adulthood, and when you think about them as individuals, we have a responsibility to support the young people in our country as well.
“We haven’t always got it right in terms of understanding why they’re not attending school, and therefore our interventions aren’t always the best placed to fix that.”
Jo Clayton, whose daughter has been in the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system for the last eight years, said the current framework is ‘broken beyond anything I could imagine’.
She said: “I’ve been through burnout, I’ve been through despair, I’ve been through things that no mum or dad should ever have to go through.”
Clayton has now written a script for a short film called Unauthorised Absence, which follows a mother struggling under the threat of fines and prosecution for her daughter’s absence.
After raising over £14,000 through a funding appeal on Kickstarter, the project is being brought to life by award winning filmmaker with over a decade working in the education system, Natalie Lauren.
Clayton added: “We’re trying to do for the attendance laws what Mr. Bates vs The Post Office did for Post Office PR: to expose the human cost of a broken system.
“We want to bring people together to really affect a change that will make such a difference to so many families who are struggling unnecessarily and who are isolated.”
Currently, the Government is aiming to boost overall national attendance from 91% to 94% as part of a growing focus on halving the attainment gap between disadvantaged students and their more affluent peers.
However, while total rates of absence in London have stayed below national levels, pockets of the lowest school attendance have experienced the smallest changes since Covid.
According to the most recent data, 14 boroughs are above the average in England for persistent absences, with Camden and Islington having the second and fourth highest rates in the country respectively.
Ellie Costello, executive director of the organisation Square Peg which campaigns for decriminalisation and better understanding of attendance challenges, told The Londoners that the ‘fires were already burning’ with student absences before the pandemic.
She said: “What Covid did was it exacerbated and accelerated a lot of the challenges, as well as created new cohorts of children who perhaps were traumatically bereaved or acquired worse health outcomes as a result of having Covid themselves, or those that were clinging on by their fingernails but, from a school’s perspective, were fine.
“Actually, Covid was the nail in the coffin.”
A NEET solution?
Analysis by Impetus, an organisation that campaigns for disadvantaged students in education, suggests that continued absence during school doubles the chances of a young person being NEET in adulthood.
Their analysis shows persistent and severe absences reduce GCSE pass rates by 39-percentage points and 71-percentage points respectively.
There is particular concern for disadvantaged students and those with special educational needs, who make up a significant proportion of absent students in the capital.
O’Regan said: “If you are disadvantaged and you have SEND – and we know that disadvantaged children are more likely to have SEND, and they’re less likely to access the support they need to thrive within education – that really starts to skyrocket.
“We end up with this cohort of disadvantaged children with SEND, and they’re three plus times more likely to end up as NEET.
“The cost of our NEET population is outstripping the total budget for our education system at the moment, so it’s just a really inefficient use of our money to be supporting a cohort of children that are turning into NEET, when actually earlier intervention could certainly prevent that.”
In London, disadvantaged children and students with Education, Health and Care plans (EHCPs) are more than twice as likely to be persistently absent than other students in their schools.
Severe absenteeism is nearly three times more common among disadvantaged students, and nearly five and a half times more likely for students with EHCPs.
But while there is a clear link between low attendance and attainment, the transition from school absence to NEET can be more complex than just receiving lower grades.
O’Regan said: “There’s something around the reason that you didn’t engage with your education in the first place could well be the reason that you then don’t engage in your post-16 study and don’t engage in the workforce.
“There are too many children funnelled through this very academic, traditional GCSE route that was never going to work for them, and we need to have a bit of flexibility for them.”
Costello added the perception of a ‘lost generation’ following the pandemic influenced some students to think that their education was not worthwhile.
She said: “All of those narratives were really impacting children’s sense of agency and hope for the future, because a lot of the narratives were predetermining what their future was going to look like.”
Costello explained that narrow academic focus in the curriculum has contributed to many students feeling that traditional post-16 education is not within their reach, leading to tension within schools who are under pressure to meet results targets.
“There’s a lot of perverse incentives in the system and on school leaders to focus on results. I worry that we’re focussed on presenteeism as being a positive metric that everyone’s turning up and learning, but we all know you can be in a class and zone out, and being there in body doesn’t mean you’re there in mind,” she said.
“I think that there are some false dichotomies that are playing out, and I worry that there isn’t enough innovation happening.”
“We know that the stick isn’t working”
In June this year, the Department for Education published new guidance for how to communicate with parents about low attendance, prioritising schools and parents working ‘together as partners’.
But while the guidance highlighted the importance of building relationships with families, it also warned that schools must ‘make sure parents understand what is expected of them by regularly communicating the school policy, thresholds and their legal responsibilities’.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “Improving attendance is everyone’s responsibility. That’s why we’re giving schools better tools to identify problems early and work with families to address them, while encouraging parents to play their part in building strong attendance habits.”
Despite many schools placing a greater focus on family support, Costello warns that the ongoing threat of fines and prosecution continues to drive a lack of engagement between schools, children, and parents.
By 2025, the number of penalty notices issued for absences had increased by nearly 50% on pre-pandemic levels.
“We know that the stick isn’t working. And actually, it is driving disengagement, withdrawal, and distrust. The support is definitely there, but it’s very time limited and it varies,” Costello said.
“We know that the schools that are really focussing on relationships and connections between adults and children, learning improves, attainment improves, and attendance improves.”
O’Regan added it is vital for students to build positive relationships with adults and feel that their needs are met in school in order to tackle absenteeism.
She said: “It’s about school culture, as well as interventions. If we get the culture right in the first place, we don’t need as many interventions.
“You want to make those young people feel engaged, like they belong, and like their education is worth something.”
But while O’Regan sees early action on attendance issues is vital, she says that many schools often do not have the resources to address emerging concerns.
“School is an ecosystem,” she added.
“There’s going to be a whole host of things that come into play their like transport, like social services, and reducing the CAMHS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services] waiting list.
“We either need to give schools more resources if they’re going to deliver a broader remit, or we need to not give them more and more and more things to do.”
For Costello, the case for engaging with early warning signs is vital to stop children facing further barriers in school or dropping out of further education and employment pathways later in life.
She said: “It’s important to understand that we’re not expecting schools to know about the unknowns, but when families are starting to report it early, use that as a real opportunity to lean in and really consider what needs to happen.
“And sometimes that can feel like lifting the lid on Pandora’s box and everything unravels in front of you. But actually, it’s better than it unravels sooner rather than later.”
Support for families and students experiencing school absence can be found through Square Peg’s partner organisation Not Fine in Schools, as well as through local council websites.
Featured image credit: Feliphe Schiarolli on Unsplash
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