Persistent truanting continues to decline
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
The number of children that persistently truant from English schools has continued to decline over the past year, latest figures show.
However, the data published by the Department for Education reveals that the rate of decline in persistent truanting is slowing and that the number of overall children absent from school rose for the first time in five years.
The DfE figures show that over the five half terms (the summer term is not counted) of 2012/13, 4.6 per cent of pupils were persistently absent from school, 0.6 percentage points lower than the 5.2 per cent rate in 2011/12.
The declines for the previous three years were 0.6 per cent, 0.7 per cent and 0.9 per cent, suggesting that local authorities and schools are finding it tougher to tackle a hard core of persistent truants.
Persistent absence is defined as a child missing 15 per cent of school time in a year.
Persistent absentees accounted for 22.4 per cent of all pupil absences from schools, however, overall absence rates showed a 0.1 percentage points rise in 2012/13 to 5.2 per cent. In contrast, overall absence rates fell from 5.8 per cent in 2010/11 to 5.1 per cent in 2011/12.
The data also reveals that absence levels for pupils receiving free school meals are significantly higher than those not in receipt of them – 7.6 per cent compared to 4.7 per cent. In addition, the gap gets wider when just looking at unauthorised absence: for pupils receiving free school meals the rate is 2.4 per cent compared to 0.8 per cent for children not in receipt of free school meals.
Disadvantaged groups are also more likely to have higher overall absence rates. Pupils living in the most deprived areas were 1.5 times more likely to be absent than pupils living in the least deprived areas; the overall absence rate for Irish Travellers was 21.4 per cent; while for pupils with a special educational need the absence rate was 8.2 per cent, compared to 4.8 per cent overall.
Kate Fallon, general secretary of the Association of Educational Psychologists, said higher rates of absence for pupils receiving free school meals or with an SEN were worrying.
She said: “While perhaps unsurprising, it is disturbing because the higher absence rates among these pupils are very likely to result in a disproportionately negative impact upon their outcomes later in life.
“These figures may well be telling us that pupil premium interventions are not being targeted as successfully as possible and that more guidance is needed – although, to be able to draw solid conclusions, it is important that local authorities, local commissioning groups and schools themselves carry out more analysis and research into these areas.”
The DfE said evidence shows absence from school has a significant negative effect on attainment. Of pupils who miss between 10 and 20 per cent of school, only 39 per cent achieve at least five A* to C GCSEs including English and maths. This compares to 73 per cent of pupils who miss less than five per cent of school.
The government introduced a package of measures last September to help schools ensure more children attend class, such as increased truancy fines and giving heads and teachers greater powers to tackle bad behaviour, but these were not in place for the 2012/13 academic year.