Wider social issues 'a cause' of increasing school absence rates in Warwickshire

Wider social issues have been cited in a further increase in Warwickshire children failing to attend school.

Year-on-year figures related to the autumn term in 2022 – the latest provided by the Department for Education (DfE) – showed the absence rates in the county had crept up by 0.24 per cent to 7.7 per cent overall.

This is less than the 8.1 per cent recorded for the end of the school year 2021-22 but the current figures are compared with those for the autumn of the previous year.

The national rate for the same period was 7.53 per cent, up by 0.63 per cent, meaning that while Warwickshire’s problem continued to rise, it did so at a slower rate than elsewhere in the country.

Andy Danks, who manages the county’s school attendance service, said it was a sign of the authority “narrowing the gap”, highlighting it as a “significant change”.

The news was mixed on the more concerning elements of absence.

The persistent absence rate – where a child does not attend school for 10 per cent of sessions or more – dropped to 23.55 per cent and was almost one per cent better than the national average.

However, the severe absence rate – where a child is absent more than half the time – was 2.15 per cent, some 0.41 per cent higher than the national rate.

The numbers showed that children who are eligible for free school meals were almost twice as likely to not attend school and that rate was 1.7 per cent higher than the national average in Warwickshire.

“This is a national increase and we are noticing some changes in societal issues, certainly behaviours. Absence has increased, in fact doubled since Covid,” said Mr Danks.

“Clearly, a lot of the challenges we are trying to deal with now are with young people and families who have had a challenging time through that process. Now it is time to pick up the pieces and move back to where we were.

“It is important to understand as well that the new direction is around understanding that attendance and absence is everyone’s responsibility.

“Although the attendance service focuses on parental engagement, and the latter part might be enforcement if they are not engaging, the majority of improvement can be reached through support from the appropriate agencies.

“Speaking to the early help team, most of their cases that have an attendance issue will also have other significant issues such as domestic violence, bullying and anxiety, self harm and parental illness.

"Cost of living has been raised as another factor, and young people living with family members, so that multi-agency approach to improve the lives of those young people will then impact on school attendance as a whole.”

North Warwickshire and Nuneaton and Bedworth were the two district or borough areas that fared worst with absence up to two per cent higher than in Warwick and Stratford.

The gulf was around seven per cent between those patches when it came to persistent absence.

Former county councillor Phil Johnson, who sits on the panel as a governor of three schools in the Nuneaton area, agreed that attitudes towards attendance had changed in the post-Covid world.

“I welcome the work the absence team is doing and the support we are getting,” he said.

“It is concerning to see that the highest levels of absence are in the areas of the county which have the highest levels of deprivation, SEND (special education needs and disability) and pupil premium pupils. I hope we will continue to apply focus in those areas to get those families sending their children to school.

“We know that Covid has changed a number of things, certainly in terms of families and children with mental health issues, a barrier that we have to deal with, but I also think families have got used to working from home and having their children at home.

“Now people continue to work from home, particularly on Mondays and Fridays, there is less impetus to send your children to school on those days if they say they have a tummy ache and don’t really feel like it.

“Before, if your child was off school and you had two parents working, it was a big deal. Now, not so much, there is a behavioural and cultural factor that we have to address there.”