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Two and a Half Times More Children in England Are Absent From School Than Before the Lockdowns

by Richard Eldred
11 August 2023 3:00 PM

The total number of students consistently absent has surged to 1.89 million, or roughly a fifth of all pupils. This figure is more than double the pre-pandemic tally of students who frequently skipped school. The Times has more.

More than a quarter of secondary school pupils are regularly missing school, new figures have shown.

The children’s watchdog warned that such absences could “irrevocably break the social contract between schools and families”.

Persistent absence – which is defined as missing at least 10% of school time – hit 28% in secondary schools in England in the 2022-23 academic year, according to figures released by the Department for Education.

The total number of persistently absent pupils rose again to 1.89 million, about 20% of pupils and two and a half times the number that regularly missed school before the pandemic.

The number of pupils who qualify for free school meals who are regularly missing school has tripled from pre-pandemic levels, to 765,000, analysis by the Times shows. For those poorer pupils in secondary schools, persistent absence rates have reached 47%, up from 28% before the pandemic.

The department attributed many of the absences to higher rates of illness, especially during the flu wave at the end of term last autumn.

However, the Education Policy Institute noted that disadvantaged children and those with special educational needs were particularly affected.

Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, told the Times: “The new figures out today lay bare the scale of the school attendance crisis. Three years on from the pandemic, school absences remain at unprecedented highs.

“We are failing to get children back to school. I am concerned that if further action is not taken, we risk normalising disengagement from education and irrevocably breaking the social contract between schools and families.”

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Teacher Paul Sutton thinks the reason for the sharp rise in persistent absentee-ism is because children lost confidence in teachers after seeing them behave idiotically during the pandemic. His blog post on this is worth reading.

Tags: Lockdown harmsPersistent AbsenceSchoolchildren

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17 Comments
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DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago

Building a recruitment pool for the military. Never let school absence go to waste.

8
0
Paul B
Paul B
1 year ago

“Three years on from the pandemic” – is she taking the piss?

They dragged the “Pandemic” kicking and screaming into 2022/23.

25
-1
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

What pandemic are you referring to? I have recently lived through a period during which various evil actors told everyone there was a pandemic, but I never saw any evidence of one. FFS get a grip on the way you use langauge.

51
-1
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Thanks editor/author for fixing the article title by removing the P word. We know there was no pandemic, but we don’t want to reinforce the lie for any casual readers new to the site.

35
-1
stewart
stewart
1 year ago

Maybe after schools tried to put them in muzzles and tested them for disease relentlessly as if they were farm animals for the best part of two years, students might have developed some doubts as to whether schools are all that good for them.

71
-1
soundofreason
soundofreason
1 year ago

The total number of persistently absent pupils rose again to 1.89 million, about 20% of pupils and two and a half times the number that regularly missed school before the pandemic lockdown.

29
0
JohnK
JohnK
1 year ago

What a surprise. A complete loss of competence when it comes to proper planning. No doubt it will take a while for organisations involved in education to recover and provide a proper service for younger generations. They have a lot to learn, not just the students.

15
0
Ravin Mad
Ravin Mad
1 year ago

I work with a number of primary and secondary schools who are all struggling with persistent absence. It’s far far worse than pre-pandemic. It’s not just the disadvantaged children who are going missing. Term time holidays are worse than ever (not only because of the costs but also because they think it’s their entitlement having missed out during the pandemic). Schools are analysing patterns of absence and they think that working from home is also having a big impact. “Let’s do something nice as a family on Friday when it’s less busy”. After all, in some parents’ minds school isn’t valued anymore – how can it be that important if the Government was happy to keep children at home for so long in 2020/21?

48
0
LaptopMaestro
LaptopMaestro
1 year ago
Reply to  Ravin Mad

Net Zero is making school less important – they need to focus on survival skills

16
-1
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago
Reply to  Ravin Mad

Do you happen to know if one of the reasons is that parents are removing their kids so they can be home-schooled? I’m just wondering if anyone can actually access and share this data, because it must surely be recorded somewhere such as with local authorities. It would be interesting to know this detail as opposed to presume all kids are just bunking off because they come from broken homes and have parents who don’t give a stuff about their education or whereabouts.

20
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Ravin Mad
Ravin Mad
1 year ago
Reply to  Mogwai

These persistent absentees would not include those who have elected to home school. However I have heard of parents taking their children out of mainstream schools to home-school because they haven’t been willing to force their child to go to school regularly, so their absences would be included until taken off the school’s register. The latest stats estimate that 86200 children were being home-schooled at the start of 2023 https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/elective-home-education

6
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Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago
Reply to  Ravin Mad

Thanks for that. Can’t believe I’m linking The Guardian, but it’s only because I was doing a bit of a brief search myself, just to see how the figures compared with previous years and the reasons why people would choose to homeschool. Actually, given the state of schools, teachers ( not all, obv ) and the teaching material nowadays in the UK I can make an educated guess why any responsible parent would wish to take their kids out of the standard education system. Anyway, more here if anyone’s interested;

”Figures published by the DfE for the first time suggested that 86,000 children in England were home schooled on one day this year, while 116,300 were in elective home education for a period over the 2021-22 school year.
Both figures are steep increases on estimates by councils before the Covid pandemic. A previous survey by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) estimated that 55,000 children were home-schooled on one day in 2018-19, which suggested a rise of 50% compared with the DfE’s 2023 figure.”

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/may/18/more-children-than-ever-are-being-home-schooled-in-england-data-shows

6
0
DickieA
DickieA
1 year ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Interesting. All 3 of my children went to a good rural comprehensive. All of them had at least 3 or 4 fellow pupils in their year who never went into school and self taught at A Level – all gaining very high grades and going on to university. The Headmaster turned a blind eye to this.

Perhaps some pupils and parents have realised that schools have become “right-on woke cesspits” and that they are better off following the syllabus at home.

Last edited 1 year ago by DickieA
12
0
LaptopMaestro
LaptopMaestro
1 year ago

Net Zero means that all that they will require is farming skills ….. they can be learned on the job.

12
0
DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago
Reply to  LaptopMaestro

Farms are being rewilded so not much need for farming skills. War is exempt from Net Zero so there will likely be vacancies for drone pilots and cannon fodder. Isn’t that the recurrent theme of government policy, have a war?

Last edited 1 year ago by DHJ
12
-1
DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago
Reply to  DHJ

Consider this question during the calm of 2019. Seems like an alternative to farming.

“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps she is taking to increase recruitment to the armed forces from rural areas.”

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2019-05-07.251335.h&s=recruit+speaker%3A14026#g251335.q0

4
0
RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago

To be honest, if I had school-age children THEY’d be absent from school ….. because I wouldn’t want them indoctrinated with the WOKE, trans-gender, climate “crisis” b0110cks which schools are promoting.

10
0

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