- Major enquiry finds post-Covid school absence crisis becoming “entrenched” driven by softening attitudes to attendance
- Despite progress persistent absence is still 40 per cent higher than 2020 with 180,000 extra school leavers at risk of long-term worklessness
- New poll shows half of all parents think it is “reasonable” to miss one in every 10 days of school despite £10,000 income loss
Bolder action to tackle the school absence crisis is urgently needed to avoid truancy becoming “deeply entrenched”, according to a major new report.
Softening attitudes to attendance, dysfunctional home lives, and a lack of engagement from teachers are all driving down rates of attendance, the report says.
The report Absent Ambition comes from the Centre for Social Justice, which has highlighted the attendance crisis plaguing UK schools over the last four years. A copy has been sent to ministers, who are planning to attend a CSJ conference tomorrow [Monday 8 September] in central London.
The CSJ study, produced in partnership with The Rigby Foundation, exposes the appalling cost to young people and society of declining levels of school attendance, which have plummeted since the Covid pandemic but were on a downward path well before 2020.
New data reveals that many parents no longer value school for their children, while others who are desperate to return an absent child to the classroom feel they are “on their own”.
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 – in other words to be “persistently absent”.
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”.
The CSJ study finds that persistent absence (missing at least 10 per cent of lessons or a day every fortnight) and severe absence (missing 50 per cent or more of lessons, so out of school more often than not) have both soared.
Annual figures show persistent absence has doubled since 2018/19 and severe absence has quadrupled over the last decade.
The CSJ report trumpets the horrific social and economic cost of a generation of mostly working class teenagers turning their backs on the classroom: “This is a crisis wrecking the life chances of thousands of children, but also the future of our economy,” the CSJ says.
The report reveals that failure to attend school regularly extinguishes hopes of GCSE passes and is a reliable predictor of a disastrous adult life marred by crime, unemployment and low earnings.
The future lifetime loss in earnings across all today’s chronic truants is as much as £28 billion, the report warns.
The CSJ finds:
- Academic attainment: pupils with over 95 per cent attendance are three times as likely as those with 85-90 per cent attendance to achieve a Grade 5 in English and Maths.
- Crime: a persistently absent pupil is three times as likely as other pupils to become a young offender within two years of leaving school.
- Worklessness: a persistently absent pupil is over six times as likely to become persistently NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training), meaning 180,000 school leavers risk falling into unemployment or long-term economic inactivity because of persistent absence during this Parliament.
- Earnings: Persistently absent pupils are £10,000 worse off by aged 28, and each day of absence loses an estimated £750 in lifetime earnings, meaning extra absence in 2023/24 as compared with 2018/19 results in an estimated loss of lifetime earnings among today’s school leavers of £28.3 billion.
The CSJ report identifies three “root causes” of the flight from the classroom.
- Mutual breakdown of trust between home and school – highlighted in findings showing that four in five headteachers say that that they have suffered parental abuse in the last year with one in ten being violently attacked
- A growing belief among parents that there is no link between success at school and getting a good job later. Over two fifths of secondary school parents (42 per cent according to the Whitestone Insight poll) believe that most of what their children are taught will not help them in later life
- Family breakdown. A half of all UK children are growing up with just one biological parent and those living with no biological parent are almost three times as likely to be persistently absent as those living with both parents
The report says it is time to reverse “softening attitudes and low attendance awareness”.
“The Government should tackle low awareness of the harms of absence and draw from evidence of similar interventions to introduce a new mandatory Attendance Awareness Course at the beginning of the legal intervention process for unauthorised absence.
“After voluntary routes have been exhausted, parents would be referred to a mandatory awareness course before being issued a fine, or an Attendance Case Management (ACM) case is opened.
“Non-attendance or refusal should result in receipt of an increased fine of £200, or £100 if paid within 21 days.”
Modelling suggests that at full rollout the courses would see over one million fewer days lost to absence over the parliament.
Alongside tougher penalties the CSJ calls on ministers to radically expand the support for parents struggling to get a severely absent pupil back to school, as well as measures to roll out extracurricular activities enjoyed widely across the independent school sector to state schools. Recommendations include:
- The national rollout of ‘attendance mentors’ to help parents with severely absent pupils with complex needs or SEND drawing from the most effective local models
- An additional five hours a week of extracurricular activities and enrichment, provided by local community groups, including a Right to Sport – two hours per week of physical activity
- Expanding the roll out of Family Hubs and new teacher training on parental engagement
- A new drive to expand work experience opportunities for young people, reconnecting the link between classrooms and the workplace
The report comes as last week the Education Secretary acknowledged “we all need to do more, and when it comes to getting kids in and behaving – this includes mums, dads and carers too.”
Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, said:
“Britain cannot hope to grow its economy if hundreds of thousands of young people are vanishing from classrooms.
“Persistent school absence is a disaster for individual prospects but it is also an economic time bomb. Today’s plan from the CSJ combines carrot and stick to resolve this crisis once and for all.”
Steve Rigby, Chair of the Rigby Foundation, said:
“The nation’s absence crisis is starving children of the flame of ambition and depriving them of an enriching education. This report maps out a road to recovery. Two great ideas stand out to me as an employer and parent – expanding opportunities for work experience and getting the right support for families striving in difficult situations through attendance mentors.”
Dan Lilley, Senior Researcher at the CSJ said:
“Ministers are making welcome progress in turning the tide on the absence crisis, but the danger now is that softening attitudes to attendance are becoming entrenched, locking thousands of children into a future of wrecked lives and wasted potential.
“This is not only a moral disaster for each and every child, but a crater in our future workforce that Britain can ill afford.
“Today the CSJ has advanced a serious plan to put an end to this crisis, combining a tougher approach attacking the drivers of absence while expanding the help for parents desperate to get their pupils reengaging with the learning. The time for bold action is now.”
