Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi should “call in” any staff responsible for a “grim” Christmas party at the Department for Education last year, a senior Tory MP has warned.

Robert Halfon, chair of the Commons’ education select committee, said reports that the then education secretary Gavin Williamson held a Christmas gathering of up to two dozen staff while while London was in Tier 2, which banned any social mixing between households, were “pretty grim”.

“I feel seriously upset about what went on in the Department for Education in my own area,” he told the BBC Today programme this morning.

“They have admitted that there was a party. I think that’s pretty grim given that children were being sent home, schools were being shut down.

“And I think that the new secretary of state, who cares deeply about these issues, should call those in and hold whoever was responsible… hold them accountable.”

The gathering was held on 10 December 2020, just four days before the DfE issued a legal order to Greenwich Council forcing it to remain open despite concerns over Covid cases in the area.

The DfE has said the gathering was “work related” but accepted it “would have been better not to have gathered in this way at this time”.

‘Ghost children’

Mr Halfon also suggested in the same interview that an army of volunteers should be used to combat the problem of “ghost children” who have disappeared from school rolls in the wake of the pandemic, and could be vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

And he criticised government efforts so far to identify the number of missing children from schools.

“I think it’s a fairly meagre effort at this point in time,” he said.

“I’ve been talking about this since the summer and I use the term ghost children because these are children who’ve fallen off the school rolls.”

“Often the school and local councils don’t know where these children are or what is happening to them. ”

He said that the Centre for Social Justice estimated that around 100,000 children could be facing safeguarding issues including online harms, domestic abuse or from county lines gangs, and that there needed to be a “serious effort” from the DfE to collect data from local councils and schools about where these children were.

Mr Halfon said that the Centre for Social Justice had suggested the appointment of 2,000 engagement mentors to work with families to bring children back to school. As with the NHS “army” of volunteers, he said, there should be an “education army” of retired teacher volunteers of retired teachers or former Ofsted inspectors working to engage with families. 

Mr Halfon added that if there needed to be more catch-up funding to solve the issue, “so be it”, and said that some of the existing catch-up fund “should be used purely for engagement to get these pupils into schools”.

“I also think the government needs to be much more imaginative and set up this army of volunteers,” he said.

The Feltham Reach Academy in London had a successful programme to bring children back into school, he said.

“But if you’ve got 100,000 ghost children who are not on the school rolls anymore that should be a number one priority for the government to try and solve this problem.”

The DfE has said it supports parents wishing to home-educate children but this decision must be made in a child’s best interests.

It has provided guidance for councils and parents in situations where home education is being considered and has said it remains committed to a registration system for home-educated pupils.

Responding to criticism over the Christmas party, a DfE spokesperson said: “On 10th December 2020 a gathering of colleagues who were already present at the office - and who had worked together throughout the pandemic, as they couldn’t work from home - took place in the DfE office building in London at a time when the city was subject to tier 2 restrictions.

“The gathering was used to thank those staff for their efforts during the pandemic.

“Drinks and snacks were brought by those attending and no outside guests or supporting staff were invited or present.

“While this was work-related, looking back we accept it would have been better not to have gathered in this way at that particular time.”