The government’s approach to cutting pupil absence is “unfair” and futile while mental health waiting lists are so long, MPs were told this week.
The warning follows the publication of Department for Education (DfE) guidance for improving school attendance, setting out expectations for schools to have a clear attendance policy and outlining a new national system for when fines should be issued over pupil absence.
The guidance, which - before the Schools Bill was scrapped - was due to become statutory from this September, was announced amid wider focus on attendance by the DfE, driven by a rise in pupil absence.
The department told Tes this week that it still intends for the guidance to become statutory but does not yet have a specific timeline.
During an education committee evidence session on persistent absence this week, mental health experts warned that any statutory guidance needs to take into account the level of wider support available to pupils.
Vicki Nash, associate director of external relations at the mental health charity Mind, said: “There is absolutely no point in setting this statutory guidance on attendance if you’ve got...young people...on long waiting lists, they are very ill and there is no support around them - that just feels really unfair.”
Any guidance should be drawn up in collaboration with the Department for Health and Social Care, she said.
Absence fines do not seem to be helping young people get back into school and simply put “additional pressure on the young person and the family”, she added.
Her warning chimes with comments from school leaders who say the rise in absence is largely owing to wider problems, such as rising poverty and a mental health “tsunami”.
Dr Daniel Stavrou, policy vice-chair of the Special Education Consortium, was also speaking at the committee and said he believed there should be some form of statutory guidance around attendance but had reservations about the guidance produced by the DfE.
The guidance needs to be “much more geared towards and focused on inclusive practice”, he said.
Dr Stavrou told the committee that the two leading causes of persistent absence in school are mental health challenges and unmet needs that are either identified late or not at all.
Ellie Costello, director of Square Peg, also expressed concern about the current approach to attendance.
Given the increase in persistent absence and the “sheer scale of children with emerging mental health conditions and severe levels of need”, it was important to “tread very carefully”, she said.
Ms Costello said that Square Peg is calling for an attendance code of practice that would “offer some assurance and some reassurance in the same way that the SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) code of practice does”.
The committee also heard concerns about the state of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs), which Ms Costello called “the Cinderella service of the Cinderella service for a long time”.
Ms Nash said that the system was unable to cope with the volume of children needing help, leading to higher thresholds for support. This meant many were “left languishing on waiting lists or waiting to get sicker so they can get access to [the support]”.
The DfE today said seven multi-academy trusts would be joining its attendance programme, aimed at tackling pupil absence, from next month.
And the department also announced the expansion of the attendance mentors programme to four other areas.
