The school holidays are in full swing, but for growing numbers of children in Wales, the holidays don’t make much difference.
New analysis by the Bevan Foundation, Wales’ most influential think tank, shows that thousands of children are missing out on school during term time. For many, there is likely to be lasting harm to their learning and development because they are not attending.
There are a variety of reasons why children miss out on school, ranging from permanent exclusion, for example because of their behaviour, to absence because of sickness, to being educated at home as a parental choice. Together they amount to thousands of pupils not getting a full education.
Since the pandemic, absence from school has rocketed. In the current school year, roughly one in ten half-day school sessions was missed by pupils. The proportion of pupils who miss out on more than one in ten school sessions is especially striking. Welsh Government figures show that overall, nearly a third of pupils – some 150,000 children in total – missed at least one in ten school sessions. That’s a lot of pupils missing a lot of school.
The main reason that school sessions are missed is illness, with around 40% being missed for that reason. Family holidays (whether authorised or not) account for a further 11% of missed sessions, while a plethora of other reasons including religious observance, medical appointments, study leave and unauthorised absence account for the rest.
While absence is down to pupils, much smaller but nevertheless growing numbers of children are excluded from school by their headteacher.
In the year to July 2022, more than 25,137 children were barred from attending school, most of them for a fixed period of five days or less.
However, more than 900 were excluded for a longer period and more than 300 were excluded from school permanently.
Recent research by academics at Cardiff University suggests that formal exclusions from school are the tip of the iceberg. They found that it was common for secondary school age pupils to be asked to leave the classroom, sometimes on multiple occasions. As with a formal exclusion, pupils are prevented from participating in their usual learning, but without any requirement for support or alternative provision.
Some children simply do not attend school. Last school year, more than 5,000 children in Wales were known to be home educated, and a further 2,400 children received their education at other establishments, most commonly at a pupil referral unit.
Does it matter?
In a word, yes. Children who miss out on school tend to do less well in exams – hardly surprising as they are missing out on learning – and they also tend to have lower levels of wellbeing. The children who are most likely to miss out on school, for whatever reason, are more likely to be from a low income family (measured by their eligibility for a free school meal), be in secondary school, have special educational needs or additional learning needs, and be from some ethnic groups notably Traveller, Roma and Gypsy groups.
The answer to better attendance is often seen as a mix of carrot and stick, with rewards for good attendance and fines for absence. But unless and until schools are places where learners of all ages want to be, where they can learn and develop as rounded human beings, children will not thrive and achieve their full potential.
