Mercy Muroki: Government is yet again chronically failing this country's children

Shocking new figures released by the Centre for Social Justice think tank have revealed just how severe the problem of children being severely absent from school is.

Last year the organisation revealed that when schools reopened in Autumn 2020 following lockdown, the number of pupils who were missing MOST school days was 93,500.

This was a dramatic 33,000 increase from before the pandemic.

NOW, new analysis just published sheds more lights on the sheer scale of the problem.

It finds that when schools reopened in Autumn 2020, in half of all local authorities, at least 500 children were missing more school than they were attending.

Over 700 schools were missing an entire class-worth of children.

AND the most disadvantaged schools were 10 times as likely to have a class-worth of missing children than the most affluent schools.

So much for levelling up.

Where do we think these children are?

I can assure you they're not just at home living out a fulfilling, engaging childhood with a comprehensive, intellectually rigorous homeschooling regime.

They're not missing school because they're busy at home learning Latin, reciting Shakespeare, and practising calculus in big middle class suburban homes.

No.

These children are the most vulnerable, most disadvantaged, least hopeful children in society.

They're most likely children with poor, struggling parents. SOME of whom are undoubtedly being out-and-out neglectful.

SOME of these children are definitely living a life of terror, caught in the midst of domestic abuse.

These are children surrounded by crime, and drugs, probably living in the dingiest of conditions in forgotten council blocks.

And this really matters. That cannot be overstated.

Severe absence, as the lead researcher in this study points out, is, quote, "a conveyor belt into the youth criminal justice system".

In fact, NINETY per cent of young offenders sentenced to custody were persistently absent from school. NINETY per cent.

HALF of the current prison population report that they regularly missed school.

So, in effect – and I don't think this hyperbole – failure to get these so-called 'ghost children' back in classrooms is akin to waving them through into a life of crime.

So – given the sheer scale of the problem – you'd think the government have a plan, right?

Wrong.

Robert Halfon, Chair of the Education Select Committee in Parliament, who wrote the foreword for this report, says government has made virtually NO effort to find out what has happened to these children since Autumn 2020. The Department for Education simply does not know where they are.

Once again, evidence of a government completely consumed by Covid and lockdowns yet ignorant to it's glaringly obvious consequences.

Yet again, a government that is chronically failing this country's children.