Labour says it would use artificial intelligence (AI) to spot trends in absence, as part of plans to tackle ongoing high levels of non-attendance.
The party hopes AI would help to join up existing records for children to improve coordination between education, social care and the wider services that support families.
However, concerns have been raised by education and AI experts about data privacy, given the sensitivity of attendance data.
Labour’s announcement comes after a doubling in the persistent absence rate since 2018-19, to 21.2 per cent during the 2022-23 autumn and spring terms.
In a speech to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) in London on Tuesday, Labour shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson will also announce plans to legislate for a new register of home-schooled pupils to keep track of those not in mainstream schooling.
She is expected to say that a Labour government would make education a “priority”, and describe how it would make parents, the Department for Education, local authorities, Ofsted and trade unions “partners in the push for better”.
However, one expert sounded a warning to Tes about Labour’s plan to use AI in its attendance drive. Jeremy Knox, associate professor of digital education at the University of Oxford, said there could be “serious questions about the protection of the data”.
Projects like this are “usually not a government-developed system”, so private companies could become forms of “new authorities of educational insight” regarding attendance, he said.
Using AI to tackle pupil absence
Sarah Hannafin, head of policy for the NAHT school leaders’ union, said generative AI had the potential to improve certain aspects of the education system, but also voiced concern over the risks of using it to improve attendance.
She said: “While AI could potentially be a useful tool to improve coordination between services which support children and families, there are concerns about unreliability, data privacy and bias of the technology, which need to be thoroughly explored and resolved before expanding its use to an area like this.”
Currently “no AI tool is infallible or can replace the judgement and knowledge of a human expert”, she added.
Tomorrow Ms Phillipson will also reiterate Labour plans to:
- Empower Ofsted to review absence as part of its annual safeguarding review.
- Fund interventions to boost speech and language development among young children.
- Introduce dedicated counsellors in every secondary school.
- Reform the curriculum.
- Provide free breakfast clubs for every primary school pupil in England.
Labour’s plans were broadly welcomed by Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, who said he would welcome ”strengthened links between education, social care and other stakeholders”.
The union would also like to see “greater investment in the wider infrastructure of family and children’s support services that have been eroded over the past 14 years”, he added.
Labour’s proposals follow a DfE announcement earlier today that it would expand attendance hubs. The DfE has also today launched a national campaign, aimed at parents, to tackle persistent absence.
The government had planned to legislate to create a register for children not in school, before the Schools Bill was ditched last year.
