The children missing education scandal

The National Children's Bureau (NCB) has published research which demonstrated the experience of children missing from education. Perhaps not surprisingly, the experiences were unremittingly negative - being at school is good for children at a social level as well as providing an education. The research also pointed out that a freedom of information request had revealed that 33,262 children had been recorded as missing education in 2014/15, but noted that the problem might be significantly worse than this. Finally, the report says that "the government does not collect national-level data", and recommends that it should.

Where children are not attending school, for whatever reason, they are quite probably not getting the level of education the state expects. Some are excluded (properly or improperly), others are ill, some attend private schools, and others are home educated. So more than 30,000 children missing education is a scandal, and it's a scandal also that the DfE does not seem to know the extent of the problem.

However, the fact is that the DfE maintains the National Pupil Database (NPD) in England, which includes information on the attendance and achievements of every pupil attending school, as well as much background data. If a child has never been registered with a school, that child will indeed be missing from the NPD - but if they have ever been registered, then they will have a record, and if they are missing education now, that information can be sucked out of the NPD - both at an individual level and in a way that can be used statistically. The termly census returns, recorded on the NPD, are the obvious place to start. Such analysis would be very useful to local authorities and the DfE in meeting their statutory duties regarding education, and would help identify children who are at all sorts of risk through non-attendance.

There needs to be some careful fact-checking, as there are several legitimate reasons why a child may not be attending a school. Their parents may have emigrated; they may be ill, or have died; they may be being home educated (which is another story, and another scandal waiting to be picked up); they may have been enrolled in a private school; or they may have moved house and not been allocated a school place on census day. But all of these can be estimated in different ways, and, in any event, local authorities really ought to know where children resident in their area are being educated.

It's not a trivial task, but it's certainly a do-able one, to set up a series of queries on the NPD that would enable children missing education to be identified at individual level, and then to do something about it. Unfortunately, ‘doing something about it' is likely to cost a significant sum for each child, so there is no particular incentive to take action, especially at a time when spending is already so constrained. But as the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has noted, children from particular groups are particularly vulnerable to missing education, including children from some ethnic minorities, children in poverty, and children with SEND.

As has been said so often, our public services must be judged on what they do for those most in need of those services, not those who need them least.

I feel particularly strongly about this, as in 2012 and 2013 I was working with colleagues in the RSA on Between the Cracks, a report on in-year admissions and the often very lengthy delays while children found a school place.

We used the NPD to carry out the background research for ‘Between the Cracks' and that's why I'm so confident it could be used in the present case.

Here are a few of the key findings which illustrate the scale of the issue:

• During 2011/12, there were a total of 300,000 in-year admissions. For every 10 pupils who moved from primary to secondary school in September 2011, another six moved schools during that school year.
• 24 per cent of pupils who moved in-year were eligible for the pupil premium, compared to a national average of 25 percent.
• 29 per cent had a special educational need recorded from the previous year.
• 61 per cent of in-year movers were either eligible for the pupil premium, or had a special need, or both.
• The attainment of pupils who make in-year moves is markedly lower than their peers, and lower still among pupils who make multiple in-year moves. Only 27 per cent of pupils who move schools three times or more during their secondary school career achieved five A* to C grade GCSEs, compared to the national average of 60 per cent.

And the killer statistic?

• 57 per cent of in-year returners (who make up 14 per cent of in-year moves) were placed within two terms; 15 per cent found a new school within four terms, and the remaining 31 per cent were out of school for at least five terms. Even allowing for moves abroad and to the independent sector, it seemed likely that in any one year around 20,000 pupils are not placed in a school after an absence of a full school term.

20,000 children every year missing a full term or more of education is itself a scandal far exceeding the ‘term time holidays' issue.

My underlying point is that the DfE already has all the data it needs to identify both problematic in-year admissions and children missing education but it has chosen not to do so - or at least, nothing I have seen indicates that the problems are being taken seriously.

Part of the problem, of course, is that admitting "challenging" or "low achieving" children to a school or academy is, in the present accountability regime (Ofsted and Performance Tables), counter-productive - there are powerful disincentives to admit children who will lower key performance indicators or who might misbehave during an inspection.

Going back to the NCB report: "Children have a right to education under English law, which is underpinned by the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child." We may have Brexit but all our children deserve a decent education. 

John Freeman is a children's services consultant and former DCS