Headteachers should pick up truants from their homes, says Gillian Keegan

Headteachers should pick up absent children from their homes when they fail to make it into school, the Education Secretary has said.

Gillian Keegan said action was needed to address a “crisis” in attendance figures after figures released earlier this year revealed 125,000 pupils in England missed 50 per cent or more of school in the autumn term, despite the lifting of Covid restrictions.

Speaking to Sky News, Mrs Keegan said headteachers have a “duty” to ensure truants were registering for classes even if it meant visiting their homes to bring them into schools, adding she would “pick them up myself if I could”.

The remarks mark a shift away from prosecuting and fining parents for not ensuring their children are in school to a more “support-first” approach adopted by the government.

Asked whether it was a good use of time for headteachers to pick up pupils from home, Mrs Keegan said: “They [headteachers] do have a duty. We all have to play our part.

“Sometimes you have to go [to the home] or sometimes you have to text the parent in the morning. Sometimes you just have to do whatever is possible.

“That’s not what we want headteachers doing all of their days. But to be honest, right now, if that works to get somebody in school, it’s worth it. I’d go pick them up myself if I could.”

But school leaders described the comments as “unhelpful”.

James Bowen, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “These comments are unhelpful and demonstrate a worrying lack of understanding of how schools operate.

“School leaders quite obviously need to be in school leading their schools - asking them to drive around the local area collecting children is not practical, nor would it be a good use of their time.

“For many years schools had local authority teams employed to do exactly this job, but we have seen them largely disappear after a decade of cuts.

“While schools clearly have an important role to play in supporting good attendance, we should not lose sight of the basic reality that bringing children to school on time is the role of parents.”

Last month, Rishi Sunak said that children missing school was a “tragedy” and “incredibly damaging for educational outcomes”.

In May, figures showed the number of children missing the majority of school had doubled since before the pandemic, in a sign of the lasting impact of lockdowns.

Ministers were urged to take action after it emerged that 125,000 pupils in England missed 50 per cent or more of school in the autumn term, despite the lifting of Covid restrictions.

The figure was more than twice as high as the 2019 autumn term when 60,200 pupils missed most of school.

Data released by the Department for Education also showed that almost a quarter of pupils missed at least 10 per cent of school in the autumn term, up from about a tenth of pupils in 2019.

Asked if the government should mandate for a register of missing pupils, Mrs Keegan told Sky News: “It’s something that my fellow MPs are very concerned about.

“I don’t have the exact date because there is a parliamentary process we have to go through, but we do intend to put it on a statutory footing and we will do that as soon as the parliamentary time allows.”

The government has said it is working to tackle school absences in the worst-affected areas of the country which will see pilot programmes of attendance hubs and mentors appointed to work with families.

It is hoped the new approach will help absent children engage with school in time for the start of the new term.

“We know statistically that if children start school in September, they are more likely to stay in school.

“So we’ve got a window of opportunity where we’re really trying to bring together mentors, attendance hubs, local authorities, schools, and families to work to get children back into school and to reduce the barriers,” she said.