The Department for Education has rejected calls from MPs for a major cross-government review of children’s mental health needs, and also ruled out changing school absence codes to record when pupils are off because of their wellbeing.
The DfE has today responded to the Commons Education Select Committee’s report on attendance, which called for a major mental health plan to tackle the absence crisis in schools.
In its response, the department said it does not believe a cross-government review of the scale of mental health needs is “necessary at this time as the government already funds work to monitor children’s mental health, and extensive cross-government working is already taking place”.
The committee had also recommended creating a specific absence code for mental ill-health.
The DfE said it was concerned that creating this would be “unhelpful” and “place a burden on schools” because teachers may not know that an absence is down to mental health reasons when taking the register in the morning.
Commenting on the government response, Robin Walker, chair of the committee and a former schools minister, said: “Outstanding questions remain about whether the education and health systems are sufficiently resourced to meet the rising tide of demand for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and mental health services.
“Everyone in the sector can see the implications this is having on children’s attendance, which will then undoubtedly impact on their academic attainment.”
Mr Walker also said there was an urgent need for the government to bring in the long-awaited register of children not in school, and statutory guidance to help schools improve attendance, including guidance on councils’ inconsistent use of fines.
The not-in-school register was originally part of the DfE’s planned Schools Bill before the legislation was dropped. Mr Walker voiced disappointment last month that it was absent from the King’s Speech.
In its response, the DfE said it remained committed to introducing registers and will legislate for them “at a future suitable opportunity”.
At a committee hearing yesterday, DfE permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood hinted that the department had wanted to include legislation to create the register in the King’s Speech.
No date for making attendance guidance statutory
The DfE said that it agreed with the committee’s recommendation that guidance on attendance should be made statutory.
It promised that guidance would be reviewed before coming into statutory force - with updated sections on mental health, targeting support meetings and SEND. The committee noted, however, that the response did not provide a timescale for when this will be achieved.
In its response, the DfE said it intended to double the number of attendance hubs by the end of the academic year - though it added that it was cautious about rolling out attendance mentoring nationally in case it duplicated work done by the Supporting Families Programme.
It did, however, say that it recognised the case for expanding the scale of an attendance mentoring pilot scheme to more local areas in 2024-25.
Attendance data and SEND
The DfE also agreed with the committee’s recommendation to ensure that all state schools are sharing daily attendance data. It said it intended to introduce regulations to make participation in this mandatory no sooner than September 2024.
It also said that data would include wording to acknowledge that children with SEND or education, health and care plans may have higher absence rates for “legitimate and unavoidable reasons”.
The DfE also said it did not believe it was necessary to conduct a review of its guidance on school uniform, which the committee had recommended to help low-income families.
