The Children’s Wellbeing Bill and School Attendance
School Attendance is a persistent and significant challenge. Despite the tremendous efforts of schools and local authorities, the number of children who are persistently absent from school has nearly doubled since pre-pandemic levels (in Autumn 2023/24 it was 19.4%). This means that many children are missing out on their education, on developing important skills and on making friends. This is particularly stark for the 2% of children who are ‘severely absent’ (less than 50% attendance).
There has been a cross party focus on school attendance which is welcome. However, despite efforts, the focus on improving attendance since the pandemic has not significantly moved the needle. In a year since the last data release, the percentage of persistent absentees has fallen by less than 5%, from 24.2% in 2022/23 to 19.4% in 2023/24, which is still drastically higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 10.9% in 2018/19. Additionally, the overall rate of severe absence has increased in the last year, up from 1.7% in 2022/23 to 2% in 2023/24; this is an increase that can be seen across all school types.
We warmly welcome the Second Reading of this ambitious bill to put children at the heart of policy and will campaign for it to move rapidly through both houses.
It aligns strongly with the spirit of our July 2024 policy report, Every Child in School and Ready to Learn: a support led route map to tackle the school attendance crisis, and as in an important step towards tackling the school attendance crisis through a support first, family centred approach.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill builds on the strong start the Government has already made tackling the school attendance crisis (including the statutory guidance to embed a support led family centred approach, investment in the Attendance Mentors Programme, a Curriculum Review to improve engagement and reform of Ofsted’s Inspection Framework on attendance). We welcome proposals to legislate on free breakfast clubs and limit the number of branded uniform items that schools can require. We also look forward to swift progress introducing the Children Not In School registers which we have campaigned for.
We hope that the Government will consider further strengthening the Bill, so we can accelerate progress tackling the school attendance crisis which still sees 1 in 5 children missing a day a week of school – enough to damage their life chances and 158,000 children out of school more often than they are in.
To accelerate progress on the school attendance issue the Bill must:
- Set an overarching “moonshot” goal to see ‘every child in school and ready to learn by 2050’ which will only be achieved by implementing a support first, family centred approach to attendance. This will galvanise collaboration and galvanise support for necessary reforms.
- Commit to funding a whole family support practitioner for every school to tackle persistent and severe absence.
- Ensure national strategies tackling child poverty and housing address the attendance crisis, including a review into the negative impact of poor housing on school attendance.
- Publish guidance on parental engagement and review impact of sanctions on attendance and relationship with parents/carers.
- Review the effectiveness of the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance in Autumn 2025, including the Targeting Support Meetings.
- Mandate schools to train staff to embed a support-led, family-centric approach to addressing low attendance.
- Consult on a new vulnerability code for attendance registers that indicates when a child is absent but receiving support.
- Reform Ofsted to incentivise whole family support and inspect attendance with safeguarding.
- Create a statutory duty on local authorities to provide early help with adequate funding to meet that duty, and publish guidance on effective delivery of early help, including appropriate thresholds that match schools’ thresholds.
- Complete the national roll out of reformed Family Hubs.
Detailed comments
- Government to set a overarching “moonshot” goal to see ‘every child in school and ready to learn by 2050.
The Government should use the Bill to set an overarching “moonshot” goal to see ‘every child in school and ready to learn by 2050’ which will only be achieved by implementing a support first, family centric approach. The school attendance crisis is complex and systemic and will not be solved overnight. A ‘moonshot’ goal will bring partners together and inspire collaboration and reform to fix our education and family support systems so that ‘every child can be in school and ready to learn by 2050 as per our route map.
- A whole family support worker for every school.
The bill provides an opportunity to invest in and promote whole family support approaches in and around schools, improving attendance and engagement and building trust with parents.
Children can be absent from school due to a range of complex and overlapping reasons that their families may be facing, including poverty, insecure housing, unsupported or undiagnosed special and educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and mental health challenges. Difficulties at home can often translate into poor attendance. No child or family is the same.
SHS whole family support practitioners work through schools to tackle root causes of absence by ‘co-creating ‘ solutions to tackle barriers to attendance – building confidence, skills and a better relationship with school. They provide intensive support as well as lighter touch prevention/ early intervention work with children and their families.
A good relationship between parents/carers and schools is vital to ensure good attendance and engagement across all students. Evidence shows that, on average, parental engagement can result in an additional four months of progress, and can lead to better behaviour, more confidence, higher attendance, and lower risk of exclusion. The impact of the pandemic has resulted in a profound change in the parental attitudes to school attendance and this is having an impact on the relationship between schools and parents/carers. Over a quarter of parents/carers (28%) now believe that it is not necessary for children to attend school everyday.
All schools should have reliable access to a whole family support services to help strengthen the bridge between home and school, working intensively to tackle complex issues, but also to help develop whole school approaches to tackling attendance via prevention and early intervention work and support with parental engagement.
- Mandate schools to train staff to embed a support-led, family-centric approach to addressing low attendance.
From August 2024 the Government’s attendance guidance, ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ became statutory, requiring schools and local authorities to adopt a support-led, family-centric approach to tackling absence. It stipulates that attendance is the responsibility of staff, schools, and local authorities. Schools are required to appoint a Senior Attendance Champion with responsibility for developing a clear vision and strategy for a good attendance which it must publish on its website. School-Home Support welcomes the guidance, but we are concerned schools do not currently have the capacity, skills or funding to deliver an effective support-led, family-centric approach to tackling absence.
To effectively support children and young people and their families, the Government should fund a whole family support practitioner for every school who is trained and supervised to work effectively with families in attendance, as laid out above.
Where this is not currently possible, schools should be resourced to ensure staff working with families on attendance are properly trained, supervised and supported by the Senior Attendance Champion to carry the role. As part of our commitment to helping schools embed best practice, School-Home Support’s Attendance Support and Development Programme provides training, supervision and professional networks to school staff who are working with families. At the school level, attendance, like safeguarding, should be everyone’s business.
- Consult on a new vulnerability code for attendance registers that indicates when a child is absent but receiving support.
During the first two terms of 2023/24, a third of individuals supported by School-Home Support continued to see their attendance drop due to challenges they continued to face. There are rarely quick fixes to tackling underlying causes of poor attendance and improving relationships with school. Securing and implementing specialist support can take time, as can establishing trust and understanding between home and school. A new vulnerability code that indicates when a child is absent from school but receiving help would give the support enough time to be implemented and be effective. It also enables better understanding among staff of the wider context and interventions. Use of the code will indicate to Ofsted during inspections that children are actively being identified and supported by the school when their attendance is low. Good understanding of the code and its implications should be seen as a strong indicator that there is a strong whole school approach to attendance which is support-led and family-led.