Clause 2
Education and Skills Bill
3:48 pm
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
That is very helpful. It would therefore be useful if we had that data and the extrapolations referred to by Jon Coles.
I return to the point that I was making. In 2006, the Department identified 13,000 secondary school persistent truants on whom it wanted to focus. Given that there were 13,000 of them, it is most unlikely that they will be rushing to participate in the duty that the Bill will impose on them. One could argue that 6,000 is an underestimate, given that the Minister has already identified 13,000. I do not know which year they come from, but if one assumes that half of them would be persistent non-attenders under the Bill, that would take us up to 6,000. I cited that figure originally to back up the Government’s likely figure, but the Minister now claims that it is a bleak outcome. I think that it is a much more likely outcome.