England’s school’s regulator, Ofsted, has stated that there is an ‘alarming’ level of children missing school with around 158,000 children missing at least half of their classes in the Spring and Autumn terms in 2024.
In Ofsted’s report, they mention that education had ‘become fractured,’ in several areas in the country with nearly 25% of students missing significant periods of school; these areas included: Blackpool, Bradford, Sunderland and Middlesborough to name a few.
It is said that around 34,000 children are being home-schooled part-time, which is being branded as flexi-schooling, however, when flexi-schooling happens it is marked down as an authorised absence by the school which makes it unclear as to how many students are being home-schooled. Flexi-schooling is being increasingly used, specifically, for children with Special Needs, or those with health needs or bad behaviour.
The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, recently announced £740million to increase the number of places for pupils with Send in mainstream schools, borderline Special Educational Needs students in mainstream have been looked over for many years so this money is welcome.
Ofsted have also warned that skilled staff shortage could be to blame with the teacher recruitment targets being missed for the fourth year in a row. So how can the government meet their teacher recruitment targets? Is there anything that can be done aside from increasing basic pay?