Increasing support for young people’s mental health is key to reducing student absence rates, according to a new report.
School attendance rates have plummeted in the wake of the pandemic, with almost a quarter of students in England now classed as persistently absent, missing at least 10% of their education.
And the lack of mental health support for young people has been identified by a committee of MPs as a key factor behind the rise.
“We have seen overwhelming evidence indicating a radical increase in mental health difficulties amongst school pupils since the Covid-19 pandemic,” according to a report published today by the House of Commons Education Select Committee.
Almost one in five (18%) of young people under 16 had a probable mental disorder, according to a survey last year, a 50% increase on the 12% recorded in 2017.
The scale of the problem seems to vindicate fears that the pandemic’s impact was every bit as damaging on children’s mental health as on their education.
These difficulties have been exacerbated by record waiting lists, which sees some young people waiting up to three years to see a specialist, the committee found.
MPs urged the Government to review the support available and bring waiting times down to four weeks.
“The increase in children suffering from mental health problems is deeply troubling and it is evident that our health service can’t meet this growing demand, leaving schools to fill the gaps,” said committee chair Robin Walker.
“A major cross-government review of how to overcome this challenge is needed and greater resources both inside and outside schools will be required.”
Absence rates are significantly higher for students assessed as having special needs, and the Government should set aside sufficient resources to make sure children got the support they needed, Mr Walker added.
Overall absence rates in England have soared from below 5% pre-pandemic to 7.5%, according to the latest Government figures.
But the number of students classed as persistently absent – missing 10% of school sessions – has more than doubled, from 10.9% in 2018/19, the last full pre-pandemic year, to 24.2%, almost one in four of all students.
And 1.7% of students miss more than half of all sessions, where a session is a half-day of school, up from 0.7% pre-pandemic.
Some of this may be driven by changing attitudes towards school. A report published last month found that many parents no longer believed that every day at school mattered, and that sanctions used to enforce attendance were seen as “antagonistic and irrelevant”.
The experience of parents during the pandemic who saw their children set just one or two hours work a day has helped bolster the belief that school attendance was not crucial, the report found.
While fines are widely used to punish parents of children who take unauthorized absence, the Education Committee called for more consistency in how they were applied across the country. MPs also said support should nearly always come before punitive measures.
The report’s focus on barriers to school attendance including mental health issues and special needs aligns with research carried out by the Education Policy Institute, an independent research body, according to its associate director Emily Hunt.
“The reasons for absence are complex,” she said. “Progress is most likely to be achieved through measures that support families to improve school attendance and tackle its root causes, as opposed to punitive measures, such as fines, which should be used only as a last resort.”
The committee also called for a register of children in elective home education, amid concerns that children could fall off the radar and were potentially at risk.
Among the committee’s other recommendations were a review of support to low-income families, including the cost of school uniforms, a public information campaign to help parents decide when their children were too ill to go to school, and ensuring more students benefit from extra-curricular activities.
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