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Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I could not agree more that schools should aspire to 100 per cent attendance—although, as the noble Baroness said, there are times when children suffer bereavement, illness or other circumstances. We are enabling the
Secretary of State to set targets aimed at reducing all types of absenteeism—not only those unauthorised by the school.In the last academic year, 0.7 per cent of half days were missed due to unauthorised absenteeism but 6.5 per cent of half days were missed due to authorised absenteeism—which accounts for 90 per cent of all absences from school. A large proportion of children stopped by truancy patrols are with an adult. According to Ofsted, the figure is about 80 per cent. Your Lordships may have read press reports in recent days in which one excuse for school absenteeism given by a family was that they were out to buy a hamster.
Children who are out of school are missing out on their education. I am sure that every Member of the Committee agrees that is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. Good attendance is crucial if children are to achieve at school. The emphasis should not be on why the child is absent from school but on making sure that he or she gets back to school as soon as possible. It is important that children are taught the importance of good attendance if they are to succeed later in life. The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said that employers might ask for an applicant's school attendance record when assessing his or her suitability for a job.
Appropriate targets play a vital role in school improvement and raising community awareness of the issue. Many schools already work hard to improve attendance and set their own targets with their local education welfare service. It is important that schools have the right incentive to take all types of absence seriously. Therefore, a requirement that targets are set for schools with above-average absence figures ensures that they put their energy into working with parents and with the education welfare service in getting children back to school instead of debating whether or not an absence should be authorised.
The targets will not be additional to existing targets. Instead, they represent a widening focus that we believe will be welcomed by schools and local education authorities. That is why we have moved to a target for all absences. Of course, I accept what the noble Baroness said. We want every school to move towards 100 per cent attendance. The clause seeks to move schools from having high levels of absence into a better position. It seeks to raise awareness, get schools to focus on the issues, work with the education welfare service and move beyond.
Of course, our ultimate objective is for every child in school to learn and develop to the best of his ability. I hope that the Committee will see that the clause forms an important part of our plans to raise the level of attainment of all pupils. It should, therefore, stand part of the Bill.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Lucas: I hoped that the noble Baroness would say something about her plans—or the Government's plans—to give schools the necessary powers to do something about the problem of absence. Schools can add something to their newsletters to parents or send a note home with little Jimmy saying that it would be
nice to see him in school more often. But it is the culture among many parents to take a relaxed attitude to the presence of a child in school. When they want to buy a hamster or take a skiing holiday off-peak or get some winter sun, they take little Jimmy out of school and off they go. Unless that occurs in the middle of an exam period, it does not really matter because being out of school provides just as good an education as being in school. Those are all things that parents say.That is a problem which the school can do nothing about. No sanctions are available. There is no sanction that anyone will lay against such parents; nor do schools have any way of offering rewards. If a target is set, surely there must be some way of it being reached.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: We do have sanctions against parents. In recent days, there was a very high-profile case of a parent who did not send her children to school. The result was that that parent was imprisoned. As I mentioned earlier this evening, I was in Stevenage last week. A head teacher there said to me that two children whom he had had great difficulty in getting back into school reappeared last Monday morning. When asked why, the children said, "Because our mum does not want to go to prison".
We have sanctions. The education welfare service does a good job in working with schools—it is often based in schools—to develop links with such families in order to get their children into school. It is very important that we ensure that the service works well. But, ultimately, sanctions do exist. They are an issue that we must consider, and local education authorities do so.
Baroness Blatch: The noble Baroness has given me no reason whatever to support the idea of a school having a target lower than 100 per cent. She said that the Government want to set targets in order to enable the Secretary of State to reduce all types of school absence. In that case, let us give them a target of 100 per cent and ask them why they have not achieved it. They may or may not have very good reasons for not doing so. But the judgment can be made. As for the child who was found with a parent buying a hamster, that parent was breaking the law and should be dealt with.
The Government appear to be taking some credit for the fact that, for the first time in a very long while, one parent has been imprisoned. I agree with the noble Baroness that that has had quite an impact throughout the parent and pupil communities. However, it came about through the persistence of the local authority. One has only to look at the catalogue of attempts that had been made to ask that parent to comply with her obligation to send her children to school to see that the local authority reached the end of the line in trying to persuade her to be compliant.
However, I still say that if only 0.7 per cent of absences are unauthorised and 6.5 per cent are authorised, then reducing the target below 100 per cent is almost to condone the rate of absence. It seems to me that one answer is to make the target 100 per cent and
to make schools accountable for the absences that fall short of that target. The Government have put up no argument or defence whatever for their proposal.I want to relate an anecdote in order to express my incredulity at this clause. I was once involved in contemplating the privatisation of cleaning and caretaking in schools. As part of the prerequisite work for that, I discovered to my horror that a bonus scheme was operating in the local authority. The scheme paid a bonus to anyone who worked at a level above 70 per cent effort. I then asked the natural follow-on question of how many people had received the bonus. I discovered that everyone had received it. The shock to me was that it was considered the norm to work at 70 per cent effort. I do not know any other norm than working flat out. One does one's best, and if one does not expect people to do their best they will not. That pertains particularly to children. The more one expects of children the more children will rise to the challenge and want to deliver.
In the case of people who were expected to work at 70 per cent, everyone received the bonus because there was no measuring system in place. The exercise is worth undertaking if only to find that out. I believe that the target should be 100 per cent. There should be no bureaucracy. The Government suggest that the local authority liaises with every school. The noble Baroness has just said that the local authority, in conjunction with the school, should arrive at a target and monitor whether that target is met. That appears to me to be an absolute nonsense. Through my amendment I advocate the removal of the clause from the Bill. I believe that the Government should expect all children to attend school on each school day of the year.
In view of the existence of published information, Ofsted inspections, the LEA's duty to see that children are in school and the parents' obligation to get their children to school, in relation to which a raft of measures can be taken by the courts, the police and support systems, I simply cannot understand the Government's reluctance to remove this clause from the Bill and their insistence on this idiotic policy.
Lord Dearing: I have great sympathy with the principle raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch. The objective should be for all children to attend school 100 per cent of the time. However, as a manager, I am conscious that to be told in difficult circumstances that 100 per cent is the target may cause people to give up. With a highly transient, difficult population teachers may say to themselves, "The legislators do not live in the same world as the people of this borough".
I believe that it will help to say on the way to that desired objective of 100 per cent, "Your target is to move towards that to a certain extent". In that situation I can see teachers rallying around the head teacher in support. As a manager, I fear that if one asks too much, people will put up their hands and not try. While agreeing with the principle put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, I realise that the
Government are adopting a practical and workable policy that will move matters in the direction that we all want.
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