End punitive approach to pupil absence, with more collaborative policies written into law, government is urged

The government should end its system of “criminalising” parents if their children truant from school as part of a more compassionate approach to absence, including being more supportive on pupils’ mental health, an advocacy group is recommending today.

As the schools bill returns to House of Lords scrutiny this afternoon, the groups Square Peg and Not Fine in School are seeking to draw attention to its clauses which seek to clamp down on pupil absence. The home education sector is also facing closer regulation under the legislation.

The groups have published a list of “three asks”, around truancy laws, an “attendance code of practice” and a “mental health absence code”.

The groups advocate “end[ing] truancy laws”: getting rid of penalties for parents which can currently include fines of up to £2,500, a community order or up to three months in jail.

They would “replace truancy laws with a compassion-focused response which focuses on ensuring welfare, social care, disability and SEN/educational support, mental health and appropriate healthcare needs have been assessed and provision is in place”.

If a child was at risk of abuse or parental neglect, there were already mechanisms in place to address this via safeguarding and social services, their statement said.

The truancy laws did “not improve outcomes for the child or their family”, nor did they increase attendance. Instead, the government’s approach “harms the most vulnerable, increases likelihood of withdrawal, disengagement, anger, resentment, distrust. It weaves intergenerational institutional cycles of harm and has no place in civil society”.

On attendance, the groups are also advocating for a less confrontational approach from the current model, which can see parents warned, in a first notice of lower-than-target attendance for their child at school, that they could go to court and get a fine if matters do not improve.

The groups are calling for an additional clause in the schools bill of an “attendance code of practice”. This would be “mapped, designed and co-produced with organisations such as ours, those with lived experience of barriers to attendance.” It would also involve other third sector organisations working in the fields including disability, special educational needs, children and family support plus education professionals, health and care practitioners and welfare teams.

Finally, the groups would also introduce a mental health absence code. This would “give schools agency to authorise absence for mental ill health”, as “too many currently do not recognise mental health [challenges] as legitimate or valid”; ensure families are not caught in an “’unauthorised absence’ fast track towards punishment; collect separate data on children with “disabling or clinical levels of mental ill health”, separate from physical illness absence data; and “act as a safeguarding and pastoral ‘flag’ for schools to notice and check in with the family to put in place support or refer to specialist services.

The schools bill would appear to be cracking down on pupils not attending school, amid concerns raised by education policy figures including the Children’s Commissioner, Rachel de Souza, about enduringly low absence rates following Covid lockdowns. Last month Education Uncovered reported on a DfE drive to keep pupils’ day-to-day attendance data in its systems for 66 years, which seems to be being enabled through the bill.

On the related issue of home education, there were some signs that the government was bowing to some concerns that its regulatory powers would be too draconian, with a series of amendments tabled by ministers for this afternoon’s report stage in the Lords. These appear to make their powers slightly more specific.

Opposition peers are poised to table amendments in this field, too. I hope to update readers on developments with respect to these aspects of the bill in the coming days.