Schools minister Nick Gibb has told MPs he does not know when attendance figures will return to pre-pandemic levels.
Mr Gibb told the Commons Education Select Committee today that “we are in uncharted territory” in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.
The schools minister was questioned by MPs in the final session of the committee’s inquiry into how the government will tackle the growing problem of persistent absence from school.
Recent government data reveals that the proportion of pupils who were persistently absent - missing 10 per cent or more of sessions - across the year to May was more than one-fifth (22 per cent).
During the inquiry session, Mr Gibb and Graham Archer, interim director general for the families group at the Department for Education, were asked by committee member and Labour MP Ian Mearns when school absence numbers would return to pre-pandemic levels.
In response to Mr Mearns’ question, Mr Gibb said: “I don’t know. We are, in a way, in uncharted territory from what we’ve all experienced.”
He added that “our children, particularly, have suffered in this period”.
Earlier in the session Mr Gibb had made a statement in which he said that while absence and persistent absence were coming down from their peak, both were still “unacceptably high”.
Covid impact on school attendance
The schools minister also told MPs that the DfE was concerned about the “longer-term consequences of a lockdown”.
He said that parents were now “more cautious” about sending their children to school with a “mild cold”.
Committee chair Robin Walker, himself a former schools minister, told Mr Gibb that headteachers have communicated parents’ increased concern about sending anxious children to school.
Mr Gibb admitted that there is a “real mental health issue” but also said it “existed in schools before the pandemic”.
Not-in-school register ‘still a priority’
Mr Gibb was also asked by Conservative MP Flick Drummond whether the child-not-in-school register was still a priority following the collapse of the government’s planned Schools Bill legislation.
The schools minister said it was “important”, adding that “we just don’t have a legislative vehicle to introduce it but we are committed to doing so”.
The register was part of the planned Schools Bill legislation, which was dropped last year.
Mr Mearns also claimed that some schools were off-rolling children - removing pupils from their roll to improve their performance in league tables - on an “industrial scale” and accused the minister of a “lack of urgency” on the issue.
Mr Mearns asked how, without a register, Ofsted “will know there is a problem in a particular school”.
Mr Gibb said the DfE had “taken measures” and referred to the duty for local authorities to know where the child is going next once they are taken off the roll.
