In response to requests from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England, local authorities were unable to say if these young people were safe or whether they were in education.
A further 13,120 students left state education and moved into home education – more than 80% of whom were persistent or severe absentees from school. These young people were also disproportionately more likely to have SEN or be living in poverty.
The figures cover the period spring 2022 to spring 2023 and have been laid out in a new report from children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza.
The report warns that an estimated 2,868 children have left state education and are now considered “a child missing education” – again they are more likely to come from deprived areas and be known to social care.
The research is based on analysis of data from local authorities in England, administrative data held by the Department for Education, and discussions with local authorities and home-educating parents.
Children covered by the report were aged 4 to 14 at the start of the 2021/22 academic year, were present in the 2021/22 administrative data, recorded as living in an English local authority, but not present in the 2022/23 administrative data – and so had “appeared to have dropped off school rolls”.
The report outlines a number of recommendations to help improve the situation, including more oversight powers for local authorities as well as concerted action to improve school attendance, mental health, and SEND support.
A key finding is that better data-sharing and a more “comprehensive approach to children’s data” is required – this is borne out by the fact that 22% of the children identified in the report’s data collection appeared to have left the state education system yet were later identified as being in state-funded mainstream schools. They had simply been – as the report’s title implies – lost in transition.
Destination unknown
During the period in question, 10,181 children left state education to unknown destinations and a third of these young people had a history of persistent of severe absenteeism.
In 70% of cases, while the children were known to the local authority, there was no information about where they had gone. In 30% of cases the child was not even known to the local authority.
The report states: “Our report exposes the gaping holes in local authority data arrangements. Local authorities rely too heavily on individual relationships and goodwill to learn about the destinations of children who leave their schools. Despite the growing number of children leaving schools, the data-sharing practices in place are flimsy and not fit-for-purpose.”
The report unearths a particular problem at transition at age 10. One-fifth of the unknown destination children in the report were aged 10 because this is the point of transition to secondary school and pupils are getting lost in the system as information is not being shared.
Of the remaining unknown destination children, 54% were aged 4 to 9 and 25% were aged 11 to 14.
Children whose destinations are unknown were more likely to be disadvantaged and from an ethnic group other than white.
Home education
There are worrying trends highlighted in the report about the characteristics of home-educated students. They were:
- Much more likely to have had poor attendance with 82% having been either persistently or severely absent.
- More likely to be living in disadvantaged areas with 64% living in the more deprived half of neighbourhoods.
- Disproportionately likely to have identified SEN – 25% of children had SEN Support, more than double the average for state schools.
Indeed, many parents interviewed for the research said that their decision to home educate was influenced by “shortcomings in support for children with SEND”.
The report states: “Most parents … said that they had chosen home education as a last resort. Parents detailed a series of incidents where schools had not offered the support their child needed to engage in education. Often, their child had started to not attend school regularly or had been subject to a series of sanctions in school.
Parents also “commonly mentioned” a lack of support for children’s mental health and anxiety.
The report adds: “Many parents and local authorities also told us about the challenges children face in trying to secure appropriate SEND provision. (We) heard of some instances where parents and schools disagreed over whether the child had a SEN and the level of support that would be necessary to enable them to engage in education.”
In her foreword to the report, Dame Rachel adds: “My office heard that the number of children in home education has been growing steadily and that many parents opting for home education are not doing so through choice.”
Children missing education
An estimated 2,868 children left the state education system and became a “child missing education”, meaning they were not registered at a school or otherwise receiving an education.
The report adds: “Local authorities speculated that some of these children may have left the UK, but lacked data-sharing arrangements to check whether this was the case.”
The analysis found that:
- Children known to social care were 7 times more likely to become a child missing education.
- Poor attendance was a precursor of becoming a child missing education: 62% were either persistently absent or severely absent.
- Nearly half (46%) of all children missing education were from the most deprived quarter of neighbourhoods.
Dame Rachel warns: “Local authorities told my office that they were worried about this group of children and did not have sufficient resources or powers to identify and support these children to return to school.”
Recommendations
The report calls for national action on school attendance, the quality of alternative provision, and to better support young people’s mental health and SEND requirements.
It also says that better management of the year 6 to 7 transition process is needed, suggesting a “national transition protocol” be put in place.
Crucially, the report calls for “powers to identify children wherever they are educated”. It adds: “Local authorities told the office about the difficulties they face tracking children and how this impacts their ability to identify and support children not receiving a suitable education.
“Information-sharing when a child leaves a school roll does not happen automatically. Schools must submit forms to the local authority and complete data returns. All too often, these steps are missed, and children fall through the gaps.”
The government has long promised to introduce a register of children who are not in school and, commenting on the report, Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that this must be brought forward urgently.
He also warned that the impact of cuts to key services was taking its toll: “Many councils have reduced early support for families amid government cuts, while funding for children’s mental health services and provision for children with SEND has failed to keep pace with demand. A lack of capacity in the essential services needed to support pupils’ additional needs sometimes contributes to school absence and decisions to educate children at home.
“What is needed is significant new investment in services like local attendance support teams, children’s social care, mental health services and special needs provision, and real action to tackle the poverty which fuels issues in families lives and makes it harder for young people to flourish at school.”
- Children’s Commissioner: Lost in transition? The destination of children who leave the state education system, February 2024: www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/resource/lost-in-transition