Children in scope

Flexi-schooled children

While the government admits that the legislation is drafted in such a wide way so as to possibly include children on school trips there has been a stated intention to include children who are flexi-schooled within the scope. It is unclear how this could be justified. There are no possible grounds for believing that these could be ‘children missing education’ nor for claiming that they are not seen by professionals. These children are on numerous registers and databases including the School Census, are in school for part of the week receiving a mainstream education and the other part being ‘educated otherwise’.

Children missing education?

Politicians and headlines in newspapers have for years mixed up children who miss some school with children who are home educated and with children who are ‘Children Missing Education’.

Even without this the rhetoric, and indeed the powers, hide the reality of who ‘Children Missing Education’ are and what the problem is. The focus on ‘identifying’ and tracking down’ these children suggests they are hidden yet the reality is that the significant majority of those are already ‘known’ and that the reasons they are missing education are because the system is failing them. 

Local authorities already have a duty to identify and these children are already captured on databases.

Children missing education databases Local authorities already have a statutory duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996 to make arrangements to establish the identities of ‘children missing education’ in their area and to keep a database of these.

Lost Pupil Database Department for Education School S2S secure database, which according to the Children’s Commissioner should “provide a comprehensive view of the total number of children missing education in England”. Local authorities claim that schools found the process or the software difficult to use and that the numbers where this was so were too high for training to be feasible. Local authorities reported schools failing to comply with their statutory duty to report children moving off-roll, despite failure to comply with the duty as laid out in the Pupil Registration Regulations 2024 being a criminal offence. Creating yet another register will not solve these problems.

How many known to be missing?
Headline figures are 145,200 children, an alarming figure. However this includes children waiting for even a day for a school place and is markedly different from the 2024 research by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner which found that 2,868 children were last categorised as a child missing education. Of these about half were actually known to be missing education and 6% were CME but were awaiting educational provision. Some children were initially CME because the only school place offered was considered inappropriate by the parent but then parents decided to home educate.

Why are children CME and what can be done?
Key issues identified which led to children being CME were lack of availability of school places and the negative impact of accountability measures on placing children who schools believed would need too much support. Being homeless, being ‘looked after’, being a refugees or being excluded all were risk factors for becoming CME.

There are also a small number of children classed as CME who are never found.
Many of these children will be well – the research showed that children could be wrongly classed as CME including 36% who had left England.

However potentially these could include children at risk, yet despite the focus on CME, little is done to deal with this.

Only a small minority of local authorities would escalate the case or continue to actively search for a child who was not located via initial checks or within a set period. Some referred those with known risks to social services, 19% of the 129 LA policies reviewed escalated or triaged cases to police or social care where they could not easily find a child. Others, interpreting this in line with ‘reasonable enquiries’ either took no further steps or recorded the case on the Lost Pupil database, with occasional follow ups. Deciding what cases should be escalated to social services was a barrier.

Home educated children

Parents have a duty under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 to ensure a child receives education. If it appears that a child is not in receipt of a suitable education and after making initial inquiries they are not satisfied a local authority must issue a school attendance order. Increasingly intrusive monitoring of home educated children’s education is being justified on the basis that they ‘might’ be a child missing education. The grounds for this are weak. 

Local authority databases of home educated children Research carried out by Defend Digital Me and Suitable Education in 2021-22 of 172 Local Authorities about Children-Not-in-School did not find any Local Authority that did not keep these registers. Local authorities all tracked children who left mainstream state education at non-standard transition points under 15 different categories as per the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006. This includes home educated children who previously attended school, as well as those who come to the attention of the local authority in some other way. While it would have been in their powers to do so at an earlier point, the government did not officially record statistics on Electively Home Educated children until 2022. However, this data shows again that the issue is one of improving oversight, not that there is currently no visibility at all.