Department for Education — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Education
Robert Henry Halfon (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate in response to the Department for Education’s publication of its main estimates for 2022-23. Before I go on with my speech, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), the now Secretary of State for Education? She was on my Select Committee and was a very hard-working member. She has been a superb Minister for Universities, and I know she will carry on in that tradition in her new role as Secretary of State Today, I want to highlight three areas where the system can and must prioritise spending to achieve the Department’s goal of levelling-up education—severe and persistent absence, tackling disadvantage, and skills. Severe and persistent absence is not a new problem. Members across this House will know that I have been going on about that since last summer. At the Education Committee, we have been hearing concerns regarding the "ghost children"—a term that I coined last year—throughout the pandemic Let me set the scene. In July last year, the Centre for Social Justice reported that over 90,000 pupils were severely absent. Just a few weeks ago, the Children’s Commissioner published a report that went further, stating that an estimated 124,000 children were now severely absent, with 1.7 million persistently absent. The Department for Education’s own figures from autumn last year showed that 1.6 million children were persistently absent, which is 23.5% of all pupils. More recently, the Department for Education’s publications have highlighted that currently over 1,000 schools have an entire class-worth of children missing The Children’s Commissioner has laid out a mandate that headteachers across the country should be obsessing over attendance and she is right. How can we expect children to catch up if they are not even showing up? But in tackling attendance, we need carrots as well as sticks. The Government have introduced a consultation on their proposed reforms when it comes to attendance, including financial penalties, prosecutions and better data access Dame Rachel de Souza has said that "we do not have an accurate real time figure of how many children there are in England…let alone the number of children not receiving education." That is from the Children’s Commissioner. That cannot be right. That is why, almost a year ago now, my Committee called for a statutory register of children not in school. The Government have committed to implement that, but this is a matter of urgency and ideally should be implemented by September The recently published book, "The Children’s Inquiry", from the parents campaigning group UsforThem, highlights that, although the Children’s Commissioner mandate has been beefed up, the powers granted to the office do not include enforcement powers such as those granted to the Information Commissioner or the Financial Conduct Authority. The stick approach must include extending these powers to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner to help to ensure that every child, regardless of their background or circumstances, is returned safely to school at the start of term in September, otherwise we will risk a generation of "Oliver Twist" children being lost to the education system forever.