Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 2:57 pm on 13 February 2024.
I thank the Minister for that Answer. She knows that a child is deemed to be persistently absent if they have missed 10% or more of lessons. Across the two school terms prior to the current one, around one in five children were persistently absent from primary and secondary schools, which is more than double the figure five years ago. So there is an existential crisis and a safeguarding issue, because the link between absenteeism—children missing from school—and children taken into home education is strong. Ofsted and the Children’s Commissioner want to see a register of children not in schools, which the Government have said they support, so why was that measure not included in the King’s Speech, which was not exactly overloaded with legislation?