Writing in the Telegraph, U.K. charity leader Sir Peter Lampl has attributed the increase in school absenteeism to remote work practices during the pandemic, underlining its effect on parents’ dedication to sending their children to school. Here’s how his article begins:
I’ve been working to improve social mobility for more than 25 years, having set up the Sutton Trust in 1997 and the Education Endowment Foundation in 2012 to open up access to the best educational opportunities for young people from low-income backgrounds. In all that time, nothing I have seen has concerned me as gravely as the current crisis in school attendance.
Nobody should be underestimating the scale of this problem right now. Even before the dark winter nights arrive, heralding the season of bugs and viruses, persistent absence (defined as pupils missing 10% or more of their lessons) has more than doubled relative to its level before the pandemic. A staggering 30% of secondary school pupils and 20% of primary school pupils are persistently absent from school. That translates into lessons missed that will never be caught up, and opportunities squandered that will never be recovered. It’s a disaster in waiting.
We need to address each of the complex problems behind this emergency. Firstly, we need to look at working from home – and to have an honest conversation about how the ease of moving your working day from the office to your kitchen table has, inevitably, affected the obligation parents feel about getting their kids to go to school. The children’s commissioner Dame Rachel De Souza recently told MPs there was “a huge amount” of absence on Fridays, when “mum and dad are at home”, that “wasn’t there before”. There’s no ignoring the link.
Secondly, there is clearly a pervasive sense that the school closures during lockdown have somehow undermined the social contract that saw parents insist that their kids made it into the classroom except when they genuinely couldn’t. Certainly, it is harder to make the case to parents that a missed day of school here and there really matters when not long ago schools were shuttered for six months. This attitude needs challenging, too.
Worth reading in full.
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Councils will politely tell the Minister to foxtrot oscar and carry on regardless. Nobody but the most gullible are fooled by these statements.
Agreed. They know they need only wait a few months for sir-kneeler to become PM. Then they’ll feel empowered to hire twice as many political commissars and hang the expense.
What an unpleasant prospect.
Quite, just another word salad straight out of the Rishi Sunak book of “words speak louder than action”. Or, as my mother would have put it: “Fine words butter no parsnips.”
It has been her party that has institutionalised wokery into every workplace in the country.
Don’t believe one word she utters, nor any of the Braverman, Patel, Mogg, Redwood, Davies, Anderson gang – they are all peeing in the same pot.
Too little too late. Tories failed for decades on all the big issues.
“Tories failed for decades on all the big issues.”
Now, now tof what Ms McVey is talking about is hardly a big issue, it’s pissing in the wind stuff. And knowing how councils work I can guarantee that away days for the “directors” will not disappear because Ms McVey has directed it to be so. This sort of expense will simply be filed under something reasonable and innocuous like ‘staff training.’ Now who could argue against staff training?
The real waste in council expenditure is Directors pensions which in the case of our local council is costing millions. If Ms McVey really wanted to achieve something useful for residents she would take a chainsaw to that largesse along with the numbers employed as ‘Directors.’
Quite frankly I believe McVey has insulted the electorate with this paltry nonsense. The cost saving apparently amounts to £67,000 per council – so what?
McVey needs to keep her head down because conning the public with faux cost-cutting measures will get her nowhere. The Tories are toast now anyway at the next election – if we have one – although it is difficult not to believe that their destruction is not being deliberately orchestrated.
Indeed just a sop to try and fool voters into thinking they are conservative. And McVey is one of the less bad ones.
“And McVey is one of the less bad ones.”
Aye, and she’s nice on the eye.
Redwood, Patel, Braverman, Davies, Anderson, Mogg, Anderson et al are all out the same fake mould. They all take the whip at the end of the day.
This may be true. But when each council, on average, employs 2 EDI people at an average salary of £33500/ year, these posts should certainly just DIE.
If we want to truly cut waste in all area’s of government and public sector this would be an extremely long response, and I’d still be typing on Monday.
But, just for starters, cut out all the BS related to Net Zero and Green energy, scrap the pointless Covid enquiry and commission a “proper” one, using a few notables from here for starters.
I have a life, so I’ll leave it at that for now!
I’m intrigued to read this report about local government spending.
https://www.tussell.com/regional-spending-report
I’m torn. Will it be a whitewash or a greenwash?
Apparently you can download it for free (which always makes me suspicious). If anyone gets the time, do share its contents.
Or the Government could just scrap (or amend) the Equality Act and make the whole nonsense stop completely.
But they’d rather posture.
Have Tory MPs been asleep for 14 years or are they desperate to save themselves from oblivion.
Both.