School Attendance: Covid-19

Of course, none of this information is new to the Minister. Just before recess, he responded to my Adjournment debate on the same issue. The debate was timely, as it was just 36 hours before schools became legally responsible for providing online education for pupils self-isolating due to coronavirus. In the debate, the Minister celebrated the number of laptops and devices being distributed by the Government, which were warm words for the watching schools. Imagine my disbelief when, just three days after our debate, the Government announced huge cuts to the remote education support that schools had been promised. Some will now receive just 20% of the laptops they were expecting. The Minister must have known that the change was about to occur, so why did he not tell the House? Why did the Department wait until Parliament had risen before slipping it through?

A furious teacher contacted me after the announcement, and said:

“How ironic that days after highlighting how schools have become so reluctantly used to last-minute guidance, that schools received this announcement at past 6pm on the Friday we broke up for half-term. It would have been almost laughable if it hadn’t become the grim reality. We feel totally let down and left behind. It seems to me that the Department for Education have given up. They were not ready and made the ‘Plan Z’ decision to release what they had at the time—a weak and poor offer to support the future generations of our country.”

Unfortunately, the Minister has not yet responded to my letter sent after our debate, so I ask him, which is it: did he not know that the changes would be occurring. or did he deliberately not inform the House?

That is not just a point of principle. More school bubbles are self-isolating, more teachers are absent and more pressure is being put on the Government to close schools once again. Although I do not support that position, the Government must step in now to ensure that every child has the data and devices that they need if they are forced to learn from home.

Importantly, a device is only as effective as the internet connection with which it is used. No matter how expensive, smart or modern the device distributed, it is educationally useless if it comes without the data or dongle needed to log in from home. Being connected is one thing, but more than 880,000 children live in households with only a mobile internet connection. Mum’s mobile does not strike me as an acceptable solution to logging in and learning from home. I ask the Minister, whom I consider to be a principled person who genuinely wants the best for our young people, please not to ignore the reality. We know that the children who are furthest behind are least likely to have the tools at home they need to remain connected. The impact for children on the wrong side of the digital divide could be lifelong.

With increasing numbers of pupils self-isolating, there is no longer a theoretical debate but a practical problem for schools right now. None of us would have any pleasure in pointing to the debate as a warning that the Minister did not heed. I close by reiterating, compared with the billions of pounds pledged by the Government, what is a cheap, tangible and quick solution to the solution I outlined: give every child who is entitled to a free school meal access to the internet and an adequate device at home. Levelling up can no longer be warm words alone, because, no matter our political view, we can surely all agree that no child’s education should be dependent on their internet connection.

I also had concerns about the online learning offer. Before the debate, I talked to a headteacher of a school in my constituency in a deprived part of town with probably the highest proportion of students for whom English is an additional language. Their online data indicates that only 22% of children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a principal language other than English received good-quality online learning during the period when schools were closed. A lot of children at the school come from the Roma community, and for them it was only 10%. Again, we must look at why that was.

Going forward, we must keep schools open. Like many of my colleagues, I have received a lot of emails recently from the National Education Union about its desire for schools to be closed now, but I disagree. While I sympathise with parents and teachers who have concerns about safety, and the Government need to heed and address those, I think it is absolutely critical that, come what may, our schools are kept open.

We know far more now about the virus and its impact on young people, but we also know far more about the impact of closing schools on children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. I am pleased that, from what I have read over the past couple of days, the principal Opposition are also of the view that schools must stay open. It is incumbent on the Government and Opposition to work together in whatever way they can to ensure that that is the case.

In conclusion, although I am sympathetic to some of the concerns raised in the petition and I completely understand why, at the time it was launched, so many people signed it, in the cold light of day today I think that we must resist it and ensure that our schools have the power to issue fines. No head would issue one lightly, and they must do so sensitively where parents have serious concerns about covid-19 and its potential impact, but ultimately the school needs to have that power, because we have seen the devastating impact of school closures. We must keep schools open. I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), as I have discussed with him before on the Education Committee, on which we both serve.

There is a strong reason for that. The reason why we invest in teachers and why successive Governments—forgive me for referring to the actions of the previous Labour Government—invested so much in education is that we know that of all the policy levers we can pull in Parliament and in government, education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet in terms of shaping young people’s life chances and giving them every opportunity in life that they deserve. We know that every single day of school missed for pupils from every background has a significant impact on their achievement, their understanding, and, crucially, on their life chances. For young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, that is especially true. We have to do everything we can to make sure that throughout the pandemic, as the Children’s Commissioner has strongly argued, schools are among the last to close and the first to reopen. I appeal to parents who are minded to withdraw their children from school because of worries, concerns and anxieties about whether school is safe and the best place to be to think really carefully about their children’s long-term future and life chances. With the best will in the world, and paying enormous tribute to the work that parents and carers have been doing at home to try to support their children’s learning, that is no substitute for a qualified teacher, a trained professional, teaching children in the classroom environment. We should be really clear about that.

We should also be concerned about the impact that the first lockdown and ongoing absences are having on children’s life chances, especially on those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. In the analysis by the Education Endowment Foundation, published in June, its median estimate was that the attainment gap could widen by 36%, but plausible estimates indicated it could widen by between 11% and 75% as a result of school closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In May, Vicki Stewart, deputy director of the pupil premium and school food division in the Department for Education, pointed to similar figures. Research published by the Royal Society in June suggested that school time lost because of the pandemic could harm the economy for the next 65 years, and unless catch-up lessons are effective, researchers predict a 3% loss in future annual earnings for pupils caught up in the pandemic.

I refer to those figures not because I have a utilitarian view that education matters only because of the long-term interests of the economy or people’s earnings potential, but to underline the point that a significant period of time missed—pupils have already missed significant time in school this year—has an impact not only on this academic year or the next round of examinations or the examinations beyond that; it has a long-term, lasting and detrimental impact on people’s life chances and opportunities, so we cannot be complacent about that.

Analysis of Government data by FFT Education Datalab found that pupils missing the most schooling are in the poorest areas of the country. That is compounded by the fact that online remote schooling has worked less well for poorer families. That should not be a surprise to anyone. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden outlined powerfully before the recess, there is deeply unequal access to online learning at home. It should come as no surprise to people that those from the poorest backgrounds do not necessarily have access to the suitable devices that they need, but they lack even the broadband internet access that many people take for granted. The pay-as-you-go charging rates and the stark figures of how much it costs to access Oak National Academy or BBC Bitesize is staggering. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden that the Government should ensure that no pupil forced to isolate at home does so without access to the IT and internet access that they need. I call on internet service providers to play their part too, because there is more that they could do. It is within their gift, for example, to make sure that certain websites, such as Oak National Academy or BBC Bitesize, which are there for legitimate online learning purposes, are made free to access and should not count towards people’s data limits. That would be a really good way for the big internet service providers and telecoms companies to step up to the plate.

As a general point, as was set out earlier in the debate, fines are a blunt instrument for compelling people to turn up to schools. The general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, Geoff Barton, said:

“We don’t think that it is the right approach to fine parents for the non-attendance of children as soon as schools fully reopen in September, and the Government should not expect schools to take this action.”

We have had similar representations from the National Education Union and the National Association of Head Teachers. As much as the Government say, “Let’s have a conversation first. This is about discretion,” we have seen too many cases in which that does not apply, and schools do not necessarily believe that they have the flexibility that the Government say they do.

One of my constituents, a teenage girl who was shot in the lungs when she was a young child, was compelled by her school to go back, despite the risk of coronavirus and a letter from her GP, because the school threatened her with a fine. A mother of a terminally ill three-year-old was forced to deregister her older daughter from her school to avoid being charged weekly non-attendance fines. A woman with type 1 diabetes, asthma and an underactive thyroid, which means she is classed her as clinically vulnerable under NHS guidelines, has been threatened with a three-month prison sentence and a £2,500 fine because she refused to send her children back to school amid coronavirus.

Some of this stuff is bizarre. It is really inappropriate to put families in that position. As a general point of principle, I do not think school fines work, and in the current circumstances the Government have to be clearer in their guidance about what happens if there are vulnerable family members at home with underlying health conditions who are concerned that a child coming back from school might present a risk, or if vulnerable people live with a member of school staff who presents a risk. That is something about which lots of staff in school and school leaders are anxious.

At the beginning of the outbreak, we made the difficult decision to limit the number of pupils attending school, and we empowered schools and local professionals to prioritise the attendance of vulnerable children and the children of critical workers. Although rates of coronavirus are rising, it is vital that children attend school to minimise as far as possible the long-term impact of the pandemic on their education. We are clear that school attendance is mandatory, and all the usual rules apply, including regarding parents’ duty to secure their child’s regular attendance at school, and the ability of schools and local authorities to issue sanctions and secure attendance.

The Department will shortly issue summary guidance to schools setting out the implications of the new national restrictions. There is a clear correlation, as the hon. Member for Ilford North said, between time absent from school and attainment. Pupils with higher overall absence tend to do less well in their GCSEs. Figures show that as of 22 October, 99.3% of schools were open, excluding schools on half term or inset days, and up to 7 million children and young people were in school; that represents 86% of pupils across the country. We continue to regularly collect and monitor school attendance data, which is published weekly as part of the Department’s commitment to transparency and to supporting local action.

To support high levels of attendance, we have specifically asked schools to continue to communicate clear and consistent expectations about school attendance to pupils and their families. We have asked schools to identify pupils who are reluctant to attend or who are at risk of disengagement, and to develop plans to re-engage them, using the catch-up funding that they will receive.

We have asked schools to work closely with other professionals, including social workers and specialist services, to support pupils’ attendance. There are examples of excellent work to support high levels of attendance across the country, including in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. The Stoke-on-Trent opportunity area is funding a project to tackle the underlying causes of unauthorised absence by creating a behaviour and attendance leaders network to establish consistent approaches and shared best practice across all the schools in the city.

Underpinning all this important work by schools are the usual school attendance rules and legal duties. These rules and duties will continue to apply during the forthcoming new national restrictions. Parents have a duty under section 7 of the Education Act 1996 to ensure that if their child is of compulsory school age, they receive an efficient full-time education, either by attendance at school or otherwise.

Schools and local authorities can use a range of measures if a child’s attendance becomes a problem. The law gives schools and local authorities power to offer parenting contracts and obtain parenting orders to improve school attendance. Where a parent has failed to secure their child’s regular attendance, prosecution of a parent is available to local authorities as a last resort, under section 444 of the Education Act 1996.

Of course, now more than ever, we trust schools and local authorities to consider the circumstances of each pupil and family when considering what the appropriate action is to tackle absence and support the child’s attendance, and whether to use those powers. We trust them to do this sensitively, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich. We also encourage parents to work with their child’s school and the local authority, to discuss the reasons behind their child’s absence, and to agree together an action plan, so that the right support can be put in place to help the child return to regular and consistent education.

Where children are not able to attend school because they are following public or clinical health advice related to coronavirus, parents will not be penalised. We will shortly publish updated guidance setting out current attendance expectations for children who are clinically extremely vulnerable. We also recognise that some pupils or families may still be anxious about sending their child to school, especially in the light of the rise in infections. Schools have been discussing those concerns with these families in order to provide reassurance.

To increase support further in the long term, we remain committed to tackling mental health problems and implementing our joint Green Paper, which helps to introduce new mental health support teams, linked to schools and colleges. Those teams will help schools deal with mental health issues, which are as prevalent as, if not more prevalent than, they have been in recent years.

The safety of all children in schools is especially important at present. We have set out a clear framework so that school leaders can put in place protective measures for pupils and their staff. Protective controls include ensuring that people who have symptoms do not attend school, that robust hand and respiratory hygiene measures are followed, that cleaning arrangements are enhanced, that contact is minimised between individuals, and that schools actively engage with NHS Test and Trace.

All four UK chief medical officers have been clear that the risk to children of becoming severely ill from coronavirus is low. Therefore, for the vast majority of children, the benefits of being back in the classroom far outweigh the risks. Nevertheless, access to testing is available for any child, young person or member of staff displaying symptoms, as well as any symptomatic members of their household. Supplies of test kits have also been provided to all schools for those who develop symptoms on site and face significant personal barriers to accessing a test.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden raised the important issue of remote education, as she did in the Adjournment debate just before the recess. I share her genuine passion for ensuring that all children have access to remote education. We are clear that for some pupils who are unable to attend school in person, remote education may need to be an essential component of their education, alongside classroom teaching. In those circumstances, the Government want to ensure that there is no doubt about the roles and responsibilities within the system for providing remote education.

The Secretary of State therefore made a temporary continuity direction on 1 October to clarify that schools have a duty to provide remote education for state-funded school-aged children who are unable to attend school due to coronavirus, in line with our guidance and the law. To support schools and colleges in meeting those expectations, the Department announced a further remote education support package, which includes access to the right technology to deliver remote education, peer-to-peer training on how to use it effectively, and practical tools, guidance and webinars. Alongside that, the Department has made £4.84 million available for Oak National Academy, both for the summer term of the last academic year and for the 2020-21 academic year, so that it can provide video lessons on a broad range of subjects for reception up to year 11.

The hon. Lady also talked about devices. The Government are doing everything that they can to support schools in delivering remote education. Having invested more than £195 million in supporting remote education, the Department delivered more than 220,000 laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children who would not otherwise have access to a digital device, and we are adding to the support by making 340,000 additional laptops and tablets available to support children who might face disruption to their education this term. Since September—the beginning of term—more than 100,000 of those laptops have already been delivered to schools.

In the context of increasing global demand, we are bringing schools’ device allocations more closely in line with the average size of a pupil group that is self-isolating. We recognise that levels of self-isolation may be higher in different areas of the country, and that face-to-face education is being prioritised in all eventualities.