More than four years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impacts of lockdown continue to severely affect children’s education in Scotland. Despite the passage of time, the Scottish Government has not fully addressed the scale of this crisis or implemented a comprehensive response, particularly in managing rising school absenteeism which has reached alarming levels.
When schools in Scotland reopened after lockdowns, there was an expectation that students would return eager to learn and socialize. However, this has not been the case. According to limited data from the Scottish Government, nearly one in three children are persistently absent i.e. regularly missing at least 10% of school. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) in their recent report entitled “Where Have All The Children Gone?” found a 72% increase in the number of children missing 50% or more of school time compared to pre-pandemic levels. These students, who are more frequently absent than present, represent a significant concern. These figures confirmed the Reform Scotland report in October 2023 entitled “Absent Minds”.
What is particularly troubling is the lack of comprehensive data collection by the Scottish Government, which means the full extent of this crisis is unknown. Both The CSJ and Reform Scotland had to rely on Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to obtain data from local authorities because there is no centralised, complete, up-to-date absence data in Scotland. While the entire UK struggles with this issue, Scotland is notably behind England, where more detailed and regular data on school attendance is published termly.
Key Findings and Recommendations
The CSJ’s report highlights several key findings and provides recommendations for addressing the crisis. The report’s data backs that from Reform Scotland that showed in the 2022/23 academic year, 32% of Scottish children were persistently absent, missing 10% or more of their school time. In comparison, the figure in England was 21%, indicating that Scotland’s problem is even more severe.
The report also shows a 72% increase in severe absence rates (children missing 50% or more of their school time) between the 2018/19 and 2022/23 academic years. These “ghost children” are not only out of school but also out of sight of the Scottish Government, which has not collected data on severe absences. This is in stark contrast to England, where data on both persistent and severe absences are collected and published regularly.
The failure to track detailed patterns of school absence and understand the characteristics of affected pupils hampers efforts to address the crisis. The CSJ argues that the Scottish Government must urgently improve its data collection and reporting on school absence. Regular, comprehensive data should be published termly and should include breakdowns by pupil characteristics such as school type, additional support needs status, free school meals eligibility, gender, ethnicity, and deprivation levels.
A Plan for Change
The CSJ outlines a plan for reform to re-engage persistently and severely absent children. The plan focuses on improving data collection, rolling out attendance mentors, and rebuilding relationships between parents and schools.
Improving School Attendance Data:
- Education Scotland should publish termly data on school attendance, including persistent and severe absences.
- Data should be broken down by pupil characteristics and, where possible, backdated to allow for pre-pandemic comparisons.
- This would align Scotland more closely with England and provide a baseline for understanding absence rates across the UK.
Attendance Mentors:
- The Scottish Government should implement a national program of 200 attendance mentors.
- These mentors would work with families to address the underlying barriers to school attendance.
- The program is estimated to cost £8 million per year.
Rebuilding Parent-School Relationships:
- A National Parental Participation Strategy should be developed, requiring schools to focus on parental participation.
- Schools should create and publish parental participation plans in consultation with parents, tailored to local needs.
- Guidance on best practices for engaging parents of severely absent children should be provided.
Urgent Action Needed
The CSJ in its report emphasises the urgency of implementing these reforms. Without immediate action, the crisis will continue to worsen, with far-reaching consequences for children, their families, and society. The Scottish Government must take responsibility for addressing this crisis, starting with improved data collection and reporting. This will provide the foundation for understanding and tackling the problem, ultimately helping to bring these children back into view and back into school.
The legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic on education is profound and enduring. The Scottish Government’s slow response to the school absence crisis is placing a generation of children at risk of long-term harm. The time to act is now, before this crisis becomes an irreversible catastrophe.
Kenneth Ferguson is Head of Scotland at the CSJ Foundation