The schools minister has admitted that faster progress is needed on fixing the pupil attendance crisis that schools have been facing since the Covid pandemic.
Speaking exclusively to Tes as the Department for Education launches a data “tool” for schools to help them spot pupil absence trends, Damian Hinds admitted the sector is still facing an “attendance problem”.
Mr Hinds’ comments come as the sector continues to face persistently high pupil absence levels, despite the government’s ongoing drive to improve school attendance.
Government data reveals that the overall absence rate for last term was slightly higher than for the spring term last year.
When asked by Tes whether he thought progress on improving attendance was fast enough, Mr Hinds said: “I want it to be faster.”
School attendance ‘a problem not a crisis’
The minister added that the attendance issue is “the number one priority” in the DfE.
But on progress, he said: “I’d like it to move faster and that’s why we’re doing the additional things that we’re doing on top of the programmes already in place.”
In January the DfE announced that it would roll out 18 more school attendance hubs and a £15 million expansion of its mentor programme for persistently absent children.
However, when questioned, Mr Hinds stopped short of describing lower school attendance since the pandemic as a “crisis”.
“I would say that we are still having an attendance problem,” he said.
The schools minister said he recognised that the “massive effort led by schools themselves” has meant “we are seeing progress”, but said there was a need for further work with “school leaders, teachers, staff and local authorities” to tackle stubbornly high absence rates.
The DfE said its new data tool reveals “key risk points” for higher absence, including the transition from primary school to secondary, and between Years 7 and 8.
It comes after research published earlier this year uncovered a “more pronounced difference in attendance rates” and “drivers of attendance” between the two secondary year groups.
Mr Hinds said that the Year 7 to Year 8 attendance dip is “probably less well understood across society”.
DfE data tool to help schools spot trends
Schools will be asked to use the data tool to spot declining attendance trends for certain groups of pupils and act quickly to correct this. Mr Hinds said that the tool is designed to “reduce workloads” for schools.
Rob Tarn, CEO of Northern Education Trust and the government’s attendance ambassador, said that the new tool “is a big step forward” in working towards bringing attendance back to pre-pandemic levels.
The DfE said schools should focus on pupils missing between 5 and 15 per cent of school and urged leaders to benchmark performance against local and national data to make “strategic decisions” and “be laser-focused in their response”.
It comes ahead of news statutory guidance coming into force in August that will require every state school to share daily attendance registers with the DfE.
Year 11 absence is a concern
This week Tes revealed that more than a quarter of senior leaders are more concerned about high absence among Year 11 students than last year.
Asked if he was concerned that continuing high absence among Year 11 students could further impact the disadvantage-related attainment gap, Mr Hinds said: “Yes, of course.”
“I mean, we know there is an attainment gap. We’ve been narrowing the attainment gap, as you know, over a number of years and made some good progress but we’ve not eliminated it,” he added.
Last year data showed that the disadvantage gap at key stage 4 was at its widest since 2011.
Mr Hinds said that the government “really, really wants to minimise [absence] and we want to do this as quickly, but also as sustainably, as possible.”
“I want to get attendance up as far as we can...we are continuing to progress and we need to make sure we sustain that progress,” he added.
And Mr Hinds said he would like “to increase the pace of that progress”.
The schools minister also said that attendance is “everyone’s problem”, echoing the children’s commissioner’s statement last year that headteachers cannot tackle the absence crisis on their own.
“Ultimately it’s the responsibility of a parent, but as a whole society we have a responsibility and, by the way, an interest in maximising school attendance because getting the best possible education for the next generation helps all of us,” the minister said.
The former education secretary Nadhim Zahawi set up the Attendance Action Alliance in 2021 to bring together leading figures across education, health and social care to improve attendance.
The education secretary Gillian Keegan has suggested that parents working from home could be driving an increase in absences from school on Fridays.
Speaking to The Times, she said: “There are regularly 50,000 more pupil absences on Fridays compared with Mondays, which could be linked with many parents working from home.”
Ms Keegan criticised parents who allow their children to skip school, calling the behaviour “unacceptable”.
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