7 days ago
Surge in benefits claims will follow school absence crisis
School absences are becoming 'deeply entrenched' and will push almost 180,000 pupils onto benefits, experts have said.
Government data published on Thursday showed severe absence levels among pupils in England reached a record high for an autumn term last year, although overall attendance improved.
More than 147,600 pupils were classed as severely absent in the autumn term of 2024, meaning they missed at least half of classes.
It is up from the year before and marks the highest rate for an autumn term since comparable data began in 2016-17.
The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think tank warned that without urgent action, the absences would drive up the number of young people missing out on future education, employment or training by nearly 180,000.
This means almost twice as many teenagers risk falling out of the system as if absence had returned to its pre-pandemic level. The think tank said this would create an estimated lifetime cost to the taxpayer of £14bn.
Beth Prescott, the education lead at the CSJ, said: 'Five years on from school closures, classroom absences can no longer be viewed as a post-pandemic blip. The material risk now is that this issue is becoming deeply entrenched.
'This is not just an educational problem. It is sending a bow wave of harm through our economy, driving more young people towards a life of wasted potential and benefit dependency.'
Severe absence is typically lower during the autumn term, and while the latest figures are shy of a record 172,900 pupils marked as severely absent in summer 2023, the CSJ said the trend 'remains on an alarmingly upwards trajectory'.
The independent think tank, which was set up by former Tory leader Sir Ian Duncan Smith, also warned progress remained 'slow' in reducing the level of pupils classed as persistently absent – meaning they miss at least a day of school each fortnight.
The proportion of persistently absent pupils fell from 19.4 per cent in autumn 2023 to 17.8 per cent in the same term last year, latest fata show.
This equates to 1.28 million children across England absent from class at least once every two weeks – down from 1.41 million in 2023 but still 40 per cent higher than in autumn 2019.
Ms Prescott said: 'With the crisis deepening we need to attack the root causes of school absence, including softening parental attitudes to attendance and an education system that fails to engage thousands of young people.'
It follows warnings that protracted school closures during the pandemic are likely to have fractured the unwritten social contract that says parents should send their children to school each day.
'Turning the tide'
Experts including former Ofsted chief Amanda Spielman have suggested stubbornly high absence rates may be in part owing to parents' continuing working from home habits long after the pandemic.
However, other data published by the Department for Education (DfE) on Thursday showed a brightening picture for overall attendance.
The overall absence rate dropped from 6.69 per cent to 6.38 per cent, meaning around six out of every 100 pupils were missing from the classroom on a typical school day.
The DfE said the slight improvement was equivalent to around 5.3 million more days spent in school for pupils in England.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, said it showed 'we are turning the tide on a crisis that saw a generation go missing from England's schools'.
A DfE spokeswoman said: 'We inherited a broken school system so we are taking decisive action through our plan for change to tackle the attendance crisis – and the latest data shows positive green shoots with the biggest year-on-year improvement in attendance in a decade.
'We are making huge progress with over five million more days in school this year and 140,000 fewer pupils persistently absent, which research shows in time is likely to improve severe absence.'
