Last month brought another grim set of official figures on school absence in England.
In 2023-24, nearly 1.5 million pupils - a fifth of the school population - were persistent absentees, missing at least 10 per cent of their schooling.
Persistent absence rates fell a little on the previous year, but severe absence - the proportion of pupils missing 50 per cent or more - rose to its highest level ever.
This state of affairs threatens many of Labour’s goals, and not just in education. School absence is linked to being Neet (not in education, employment or training), to poor mental health and to a wide range of other risks that add to the long-term pressures on public services.
But the absence problem will not be turned around without significantly broadening the approach Labour inherited from Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government.
For ideas, the government could do worse than look back at how its Labour predecessor tackled the high levels of absence it inherited in 1997.
Absence rates fell under Tony Blair
The incoming Tony Blair Labour government in 1997 - like Starmer’s in 2024 - inherited high levels of social problems such as school absence. But a cross-sectoral approach saw absence rates in English schools fall almost without interruption for more than a decade from 2000-01.
I played a small part in this story, as director of the social exclusion unit to which Blair turned for a first analysis of the problem.
Our report in 1998 highlighted the many different causes that lead a child to be absent - including bullying, lack of interest in the curriculum, poor literacy, peer influences, parents condoning truancy or children being kept home to look after younger siblings.
And we argued that the absence problem had been compounded by fragmented responsibilities and lack of political attention.
Large-scale programmes to tackle absence
Over the decade that was to follow, the Department for Education and other partners led a sustained push to tackle the causes of absence. It funded large-scale and effective local partnership programmes that combined action on absence, behaviour and low attainment.
I’ve looked back at this record in . It shows that a swathe of programmes made a measurable difference to the drivers of absence.
Better attendance management systems were rolled out, and local partnerships led anti-bullying programmes, stepped up learning support for pupils and help for parents, embraced the extended schools model and partnered with the police to tackle crime around schools.
Wider education and youth policies, such as the child poverty strategy, greater curriculum flexibility and the Connexions advice and guidance service, created a supportive background to the strategy.
Over the seven years from 2006-07, severe absence in secondary schools was halved and persistent absence cut by 45 per cent. But investment and attention were not sustained, and the fall in absence stalled after 2013-14, before reaching crisis levels again after the pandemic.
Working together to tackle root causes
The lives of young people have changed significantly since the 2000s. But now, as then, absence has multiple causes and triggers and will not be reduced by simplistic solutions or a punitive approach.
As the government develops its strategy, it should learn from the last Labour government and get departments working together to tackle the root causes of absence.
It should seek to rebuild the relationship with parents by strengthening their ability to support their children and building trusting relationships between home and school. And it should bolster what schools can do by harnessing the contribution of health services, police and crime prevention partners and forging strong local partnerships.
Some of this will cost money, but there are low-cost interventions that work. And with the long-term cost of missed schooling running to billions, the Treasury should be the biggest cheerleader for prevention.
Prime minister Keir Starmer has committed his government to the approach of mission-led government, working in a more joined-up way to deliver ambitious long-term objectives.
A joined-up approach to prevention is just what the absence problem needs.
Moira Wallace is a former civil servant, having been permanent secretary of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and director of New Labour’s social exclusion unit
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