She is urging the government to deliver on its promise to “build back better” for children as the country recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic.
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But current policy and support is being hindered by failures by officials, who see the challenges children face as statistics or “remote concepts”, she warns.
“I have been shocked to discover how many officials have never met any of the children they are responsible for,” said Longfield.
“So many seem to view them as remote concepts or data points on an annual return. This is how children fall through the gaps – because too often the people in charge of the systems they need simply don’t see them and try to understand their world.”
Anne Longfield is stepping down after six years as children’s commissioner and is to be replaced with academy trust founder and former headteacher Dame Rachel De Souza, who takes up the role on 1 March.
Other concerns Longfield raises in her damning final speech, include a “national scandal” which sees a fifth of children finish 14 years of compulsory education and training without basic qualifications.
“That is abysmal … I don’t know what’s more shocking: that these things happen, or that they’re hardly recognised. No one can honestly believe that 20 per cent of children are incapable of achieving basic qualifications. It should be a national scandal,” she said.
Alongside her speech Longfield has published a new report linking school and social care data to show how poverty is impacting on children’s education.
This shows that a child known to social services is three times more likely to be growing up in poverty and twice as likely to have a special educational need.
"There is a large group of children who face a combination of challenges including an unstable home environment, poverty, social and emotional health problems, communication difficulties, or caring for family members.
"Our analysis reveals that three-quarters of the children who don’t achieve the basic qualifications had at least one of these issues. But it’s when these issues combine they do the most damage to a child’s prospects,” Longfield said.
She praises President Biden’s policies to tackle child poverty, introduced since he took office earlier this year. This contrasts with current uncertainty about the uplift in Universal Credit in the UK that could end in months and plunge thousands more children into poverty, she says.
“The Biden administration knows that children are the heart of our future economic success,” said Longfield.
“Yet in the UK, we’re on track to have the highest levels of child poverty since records began in the 1960s. Two weeks ago the Prime Minister said educational catch-up was the key focus of the entire government - yet we still don’t know if next month he is planning to take the Universal Credit uplift away from millions of families. The two positions aren’t compatible.
“If the government is really focused on educational catch-up, it wouldn’t even countenance pushing 800,000 children into the type of devastating poverty which can have a much bigger impact on their life chances than the school they go to or the catch-up tuition they get.
"This is the basic flaw in how government functions: different parts of the system know different areas of these children’s lives, but nobody connects the dots,” she said.
Longfield is urging Boris Johnson to ensure support for vulnerable children is a priority amid Covid-19 recovery with billions of pounds worth of investment to improve opportunities for young people.
“It would be worth every penny,” she added, calling for the introduction of a "Covid Covenant" for children.
“It should be led by the Prime Minister. A national effort to reopen our institutions and country and reboot childhood. To celebrate everything that is good about growing up in this country and begin to make good where things are not. With backing from all political parties and unions. A “Covid Covenant” from us to our children that takes children out of boxes marked ‘problem’ and see them as the opportunities they are.”
Commenting on Longfield’s speech, Children’s Society chief executive Mark Russell agreed that “too often government agencies fail to see and respond to children holistically and to address many of the challenges they face”.
He added: “When children go back to school this must be just the start of a long term recovery plan and new focus on valuing children’s well-being, making this just as important as building the economy. Young people deserve so much more.
“We echo the children’s commissioner’s thoughts that the government must fight for and nurture the optimism and ambition in every child and we are grateful to her for all that she has done speaking up for children and young people.”
The House of Commons education select committee chair Robert Halfon says the government needs to ensure children’s mental and physical health is a focus of post-Covid support, as well as helping young people to catch up academically.
His recommendations include expanding family hubs to offer relationship support, mental health counselling and employment programmes for families alongside early years services.
1/ I am setting out my response to @annelongfield's final speech as @ChildrensComm.
— Robert Halfon MP -Working Hard for Harlow- (@halfon4harlowMP) February 17, 2021
More than any other event in my time, Covid-19 has laid bare the damning truth about our educational divide. pic.twitter.com/eV0Haw8A51
Halfon added that Covid had “laid bare the damning truth about our educational divide”.
“Generation Covid now faces a torrid barrage of lost learning and a new frontier of vulnerabilities,” said Halfon.
“Particularly for disadvantaged pupils. Already, they were 18 months behind their peers by the time they took GCSEs. Now, school closures could reverse the progress made in closing the gap since 2011.”
A government spokesman said that “protecting vulnerable children has been at the heart of our response to the pandemic”.
He added: “That’s why we have enabled the most vulnerable children to continue attending school in person, while providing laptops, devices and data packages to those learning at home and ensuring the most disadvantaged children are fed and warm.
“We have also driven forward crucial reform in adoption, in the care system, in post-16 education and in mental health support – and our long-term catch up plans and investment of over £1 billion will ensure we make up for lost time in education over the course of this Parliament.
“Anne Longfield has been a tireless advocate for children, and we’re grateful for her dedication and her challenge on areas where we can continue raising the bar for the most vulnerable.”
