Education secretary says headteachers should pick up absent pupils from home

As reported by i news, NAHT has hit back at education secretary Gillian Keegan after she insisted headteachers should drive to the homes of pupils who are absent from school and pick them up

Ms Keegan claimed that headteachers “have a duty” to collect children with post-pandemic poor attendance at school now “a crisis”.

And she insisted that she would “pick them up myself” when asked how she would cope with absent pupils, with 125,000 students missing more classes than they are going to.

But the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said Ms Keegan’s “unhelpful” comments showed “a lack of understanding of how schools operate”.

Speaking to Sky News, Ms Keegan said: “They [headteachers] do have a duty. We all have to play our part. Sometimes you have to go [to the home] or sometimes you have to text the parent in the morning. Sometimes you just have to do whatever is possible.

“That’s not what we want headteachers doing all of their days. But to be honest, right now, if that works to get somebody in school, it’s worth it. I’d go pick them up myself if I could.”

But James Bowen, assistant general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said while schools have an important role to play in supporting good attendance, bringing children to school on time is the role of parents.

“These comments are unhelpful and demonstrate a worrying lack of understanding of how schools operate,” he told i.

“School leaders quite obviously need to be in school leading their schools – asking them to drive around the local area collecting children is not practical, nor would it be a good use of their time.

“For many years schools had local authority teams employed to do exactly this job, but we have seen them largely disappear after a decade of cuts.”

Earlier this year, the Children’s Commissioner said a “huge” number of children are playing truant on Fridays, as persistent absence continues to soar in the wake of the pandemic.

Nearly 100,000 children were identified as absent from classrooms completely in 2021-22, according to local authorities.

According to the Government, that means they are not registered at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school.

More than 1.7 million pupils, 24.2 per cent of all children, in England were persistenly absent by missing 10 per cent or more of their sessions in autumn 2022/23.

And 125,000 pupils missed 50 per cent or more sessions in autumn 2022/23, 1.7 per cent of all pupils, according to Government statistics.

Asked if the Government should make a register of missing pupils mandatory, Mrs Keegan said: “It’s something that my fellow MPs are very concerned about.

“I don’t have the exact date because there is a parliamentary process we have to go through, but we do intend to put it on a statutory footing and we will do that as soon as the parliamentary time allows.”

The Government insists it is tackling student absences in the worst-affected areas, with a pilot scheme of attendance hubs and mentors to work with families to drive down rates of absence.

Nine new attendance hub leads are due to support up to 600 primary schools in England, with Ms Keegan adamant that the new school year will see a push go get absent children back into classrooms.

“We know statistically that if children start school in September, they are more likely to stay in school.

“So we’ve got a window of opportunity where we’re really trying to bring together mentors, attendance hubs, local authorities, schools, and families to work to get children back into school and to reduce the barriers.”