Children must be in school - Here's how Westminster can tackle the attendance crisis

18 March 2025, 08:16

Since the pandemic, children haven’t returned to school.

Absence rates have doubled and suspensions and exclusions are at a record high - 1 in 5 children miss a day of school every fortnight. That’s six kids in every class. More and more children are invisibly moving between schools - for every child that is permanently excluded, 10 more are moved schools, or off rolled, using hidden methods.

This has a profound impact on the children themselves, their families and society.

Children cannot learn if they aren’t in the classroom. If they can’t learn, they can’t achieve their best.  If they don’t achieve their best, they get worse jobs or become unemployed. The data is clear - children who miss school regularly earn £10,000 less than their peers by age 28. Children who have been excluded from a school cost the state £170,000 more across their lifetime. This means that children missing education is a problem that should worry us all.

The good news is that we can do something about this. The Who is Losing Learning Campaign is publishing a 10 point plan to address this crisis.

I have led The Difference for six years and in that time we have worked with 700 school leaders who are walking towards this problem. Many are bucking the national trends on attendance, suspensions and exclusions in their schools. This isn’t about lowering expectations but raising them: supporting teachers to recognise signs of struggling students earlier, swapping out interventions which don’t work with ones that do, and expecting more from the learners who stand to gain the most by being inside a classroom. But national change requires policy change.

Firstly, we need to stop pouring resources into this challenge only once it’s at its most acute.  Government must invest in early intervention. Our report with IPPR shows that £850 million - if invested in the half a million children at risk of falling behind due to delays in meeting their special educational needs - would pay for itself in 5 years by stopping those needs from getting worse.

Secondly, we need to value the skills that turn the tide on lost learning. Over recent years, the Department for Education has developed a rigorous offer in schools to drive up standards in teaching and learning. The government now must do the same when it comes to inclusion. We’re calling for every school to have the expert leaders needed to create a culture which sees lost learning fall.

Finally, urgent legislation is required so that we know where each child in England is being educated at any given time. Right now, children are falling through the cracks of our system and the Department for Education doesn’t know where they are. 1 in 3 children who have moved schools have disappeared entirely.

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Kiran Gill is chief executive at The Difference and associate fellow at IPPR.

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