The Department for Education should point to the attendance crisis to make the case for more funding for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), a former schools minister has told Tes.
Robin Walker, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, said high absence rates among children with SEND should be used as “evidence” to extract more high-needs funding from the Treasury.
The committee has today published a wide-ranging report on persistent absence, which calls for more support to be provided for pupils with SEND and a major review of pupils’ mental health needs.
Its recommendations include telling the DfE to “prioritise resource for inclusion and assessment in mainstream schools, to ensure they are adequately set up to support pupils with SEND and address the current level of unmet need, and therefore improve their attendance rate”.
Speaking to Tes, Mr Walker said: “When the department goes to the Treasury to ask for more funding, the Treasury will ask what outcomes or metrics this spending should be measured against.
“For children with special needs, using measures such as GCSE results will not be appropriate, but I think the department should look to use the attendance of children with SEND as evidence to make the case that more funding is needed and to measure the success of that investment.”
The report also notes that pupils with SEND often have higher absence rates for legitimate reasons, such as being more prone to illness or having more medical appointments.
It recommends the DfE “take greater care” when reporting these statistics to avoid unhelpful comparisons.
Failing to legislate for a not-in-school register was ‘mistake’
Mr Walker also said that it has been a mistake for the government not to legislate to create a register for children not in school.
The report says the government should ensure this is “fully operational for the 2024-25 academic year” and calls on ministers “to include a suitable legislative vehicle in the next King’s Speech”.
It also calls on the government to put its guidance on attendance to schools on a statutory footing as it had previously planned.
Mr Walker said: “Both of these have been been the victim of the Schools Bill being withdrawn. I completely understand there were complex factors behind this but we think it was a mistake for the government not to draft a piece of targeted legislation to create the register.
“If you look at the debate in the House of Lords on the Schools Bill, there was widespread support for the creation of the register including from the opposition front bench.
“There is still a chance for the government to correct the mistake by bringing forward legislation in the King’s Speech, which could include the creation of a register and making its guidance statutory.”
Mr Walker highlighted how committee member Flick Drummond had put forward a private members bill to create the not-in-school register and said MPs were disappointed that the government did not adopt this.
