The prime minister has been asked to tackle the problem of children who have vanished from education after the issue was highlighted by Sky News.

Ian Mearns, a Labour MP and member of the House of Commons education committee, asked Rishi Sunak to “commit to bringing forward necessary legislation” to “initiate a national register for children missing from education”.

It comes following a Sky News report on children missing education, in which it was revealed that an estimated 24,700 young people were missing from education at any one time during the spring term this year.

Speaking during Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Mearns said: “Last year 1.7 million children missed more than 10% of their schooling.

“125,000 were absent more than they were in school and a further 140,000 children were missing from formal schooling completely.

“This is both a safeguarding and an educational catastrophe and it is happening on the prime minister’s watch.

“Yesterday, the schools minister told the education select committee that primary legislation was required to initiate a national register for children missing from education so we can find out where they are.

“Will the prime minister commit to bringing forward necessary legislation to combat this crisis for our children as a matter of urgency?”

Mr Sunak replied: “I agree with [him] that children missing school is a tragedy, and it’s incredibly damaging for educational outcomes, which is why during the pandemic and afterwards we invested £5bn to help children catch up with lost learning.

“It’s important that we continue to deliver on those plans, and we will of course make sure that we work with the sector to have more children attending school more often.”

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Sky News also revealed that the number of council staff in England whose job it is to monitor school absences has been cut by nearly half in the past decade, making it harder for a lot of councils to track children down.

In 2013, there were 751 education welfare officers, or their equivalent, compared with just 402 this year – a cut of 46%.

Attendance figures for this year’s Autumn term have been the worst on record.

The number of severely absent pupils (missing 50% or more of their education) has risen by 108% since the pandemic – that’s 125,222 pupils who were out of school more than in.

Persistent absence is also high, with 1.7 million children missing the equivalent of a morning a week of school or more – that’s 25% of the school population.

Read more:
Inside a pupil welfare unit trying to track down missing children
Absence in schools is now at crisis point. This is Teddy’s story

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In response, the Department for Education said: “The government is committed to ensuring that all children, especially the most vulnerable in our society, are safe and have access to an excellent education.

“We are continuing to work with local authorities to improve support for children missing education, which includes their voluntary registers of children not in school.

“We estimate nationally there are currently more than 1,500 [full-time equivalent] local authority attendance staff and remain committed to introducing a statutory system so that no child falls through the cracks.”

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