YOU know things are going wrong when you hear that kids are going absent from school in droves, and gangs are now running targeted social media campaigns to recruit them into the criminal underworld.
That’s what I heard from a small community charity recently.
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And it is one of the most concerning legacies of the pandemic, which saw school closures the likes of which have never been seen in modern times — and a tidal wave of so-called “ghost children”.
As the nation was told to stay at home in 2020 to protect the vulnerable, many warned that minimising the impact on young people’s education had to be a top priority.
Alas, only now are we seeing the full impact of the disruption, with thousands of children disengaging from education.
The latest figures show that the number of persistently absent pupils — those missing more than ten per cent of school time — rose by over 800,000 to 1.7million in the autumn of last year.
That’s a staggering one in four children.
The number who are “severely absent” — missing more than half of classes — has more than doubled to 125,000.
Some pupils have disappeared off the school rolls altogether.
The reasons for absence are complex, but I was struck hearing from one school counsellor who said that many of the kids sent to him for help are either too anxious or depressed to leave the house, or so angry that they head out on to the streets and into the nearest gang.
The Government needs to take absence seriously if we are to stop a lost generation of children suffering the consequences of lockdown for decades to come.
Alongside stunting their academic attainment, children with a history of school absence are around three times more likely to commit an offence than those who routinely attend school.
Using official studies, my organisation, the Centre for Social Justice, has calculated that, of the generation of pupils who started secondary school just as lockdown measures were taking effect, there could be as many as 9,000 more young offenders on our streets by 2027 if absence rates remain at the current level.
That includes 2,000 more violent offenders.
The human and financial costs of crime are huge.
We estimate that the bill to the taxpayer will be an eye-watering £100million if absence rates do not fall among 2025 school leavers.
The Government has introduced some initiatives to try to turn things around, including new guidance for schools and a local pilot of “attendance mentors”.
Attendance mentors work with parents and absent pupils themselves to find out the underlying drivers of absence and turn them around.
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But by the time the pilot is set to end in 2025, it will have reached just one per cent of severely absent pupils — fewer than 2,000 kids.
We simply cannot let the spike in absence become a net contributor to the misery thousands in our communities are already experiencing from anti-social behaviour and crime.
Nor can we afford this huge waste of precious potential.
As a father of three girls, I don’t need Department for Education research to confirm the obvious; that every day of school missed makes it less likely for a pupil to achieve good grades at GCSE.
Other studies show how absentees are vastly over-represented in the numbers proceeding from school into economic inactivity.
We need to get cracking with a proper plan to end the absence crisis, before this lost generation reaches school-leaving age.
Government must stop tinkering around the edges and accelerate the national roll-out of attendance mentors, ensuring all children benefit from an education that sets them up for life.
At a time when money is tight, the £114million underspent from earlier Covid catch-up funds should be urgently redirected towards reversing the alarming absence trend.
This would put attendance mentors in every local authority — with their sole mission being to put young people’s futures back on track.
Of course, there must be a balance of support and deterrent.
Fines can be effective, but there is evidence to suggest they are not always used appropriately at present, with some hard-up parents taking their children out of school altogether to avoid them.
The Department for Education should rapidly assess how fines are working, and how to make the most of them.
Finally, we need to be frank about what we owe to our young people after the Covid years, where they tragically fell down the priority list.
Ahead of the next election, both parties need to work much harder to get our young people back into education.
For example, there are many potential donors ready to invest in keeping kids in school, given the right encouragement.
Ministers should incentivise this investment through a new fund to match the outside support.
This should be used to pay for extra-curricular “enrichment” — including sport, arts and activities — that is commonplace in the private school sector yet still far too scarce in mainstream comprehensives.
School absence is a ticking time bomb, which all of us will pay the price for unless we start taking it seriously.
- Andy Cook is chief executive at the Centre for Social Justice.
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