Alarm at high level of school absences

May 7 2008 by Sam Wood, The Journal

PUPILS in the North East missed over one million days of school in just one term last year, it has been revealed.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families yesterday released figures for the number of primary and secondary school sessions - half days - missed in the 2007 autumn term either through pupils playing truant or with an authorised absence.

The figures showed that Newcastle was the worst area in the region for both pupils playing truant and taking legitimate days off from school.

In just one term 130,000 days of education were lost by children taking authorised absence, over 6% of the total sessions, and far higher than the national average.

Another 22,000 days were missed by children playing truant.

Overall across the whole region, 2.07m sessions or more than one million full days, were missed by pupils, over 6% of the total sessions.

In Northumberland nearly 150,000 days were lost to legitimate absences such as illness or authorised holidays, a higher rate than the national picture. Only 15,000 days were lost to pupils playing truant, a far lower percentage than nationally.

Durham had the lowest level of unauthorised absence in the region at only 0.50% of sessions missed. But nearly 200,000 days were missed to legitimate absences.

Teaching leaders last night urged parents to think twice before taking their children away on holiday during term time.

Ian Grayson, National Executive Member of the NUT for Tyne and Wear said: “If it is a legitimate illness then obviously the children should be staying at home.

“But if parents should carefully consider if they want to take children out of school for a holiday during term time, or even just for a day out.

“Every day of school missed can have an impact on a child’s education.”

Children’s minister Kevin Brennan stressed that fewer secondary school pupils were missing classes than in 2006.

He said: “The reduction of overall absence and persistent absenteeism in secondary schools shows that our policies are working.”

“The emerging evidence shows the rise in absence in primary schools last autumn was largely due to illness.

“I encourage all schools to continue to focus on minimising pupil absence, to eliminate unjustified absences and to get persistent absentees back into lessons.”

The Government acknowledged that the hard core of pupils who are persistently off school represented ‘the major challenge we must tackle.’

Councils are committed to reducing unauthorised non-attendance

IAN Clennell, Head of Education Welfare for Newcastle City Council, said the council was committed to reducing unauthorised absence.

He told The Journal: "We encourage schools to challenge explanations for absence, even if this means raising their levels of unauthorised absence and where appropriate will use legal sanctions against the parents of children who are unacceptably absent from school, issuing 883 penalty notices since September 2004.

"We also use a wide range of initiatives to reward children for school attendance – recently holding events for almost 1,500 pupils who did not miss a single day of school last year and honouring 120 pupils who have achieved at least three years of 100% school attendance, including six pupils who have not missed a day of school in 10 years.

"Although there is a minority of pupils whose attendance at school is unsatisfactory, the vast majority of pupils have excellent attendance records with nearly 10,000 pupils recording attendance of 98% or more in the last summer term."

And Maureen Clare, head of access and inclusion services at Durham County council said: "We have worked hard to reduce the levels of absence from our school and we are making progress towards out targets.

"There is a hard core of persistent absentees who we will work with."