Nicola Woolcock, Education Editor,Tuesday January 09 2024, 5.40pm GMT, The Times
Parents should not let children stay home on their birthdays or because they do not feel like going to school, the shadow education secretary said in an announcement of Labour’s education policy.
Bridget Phillipson also said Labour could rewrite VAT rules to ensure parents could not dodge the tax that it would introduce on private school fees. It could do this by bringing in new legislation to close loopholes, such as parents paying for tuition in advance.
She also praised Michael Gove, the current housing minister, for his work as education secretary a decade ago and vowed to press ahead with a home-schooling register that would force all home-educating parents to have their details recorded.
In a speech at the Centre for Social Justice, in Westminster, Phillipson said: “We would make sure that the legislation is drawn in such a way to ensure that avoidance can’t take place.
“Back in 2010, George Osborne, when he made VAT changes, did something very similar. So we’re clear there was precedent when the legislation was drawn in such a way that it is effective in raising the money that we need to invest in our state schools.”
After raising VAT to 20 per cent from 17.5 per cent in 2010, the former chancellor introduced “anti-forestalling provisions” aimed at preventing people applying the lower rate for goods and services to pre-payments.
Phillipson set out Labour’s plans to address persistent school absence across England, with more than a fifth of children missing at least a day a fortnight in the last academic year. She said that fines for taking children out of school — which have hit record levels — cannot be the answer alone.
Instead families should learn that allowing children to skip lessons was a “mark of disrespect” to teachers. Phillipson added: “Cheap holidays, birthday treats, not fancying it today. These are no excuses for missing school.
“Absences hurt not just the children missing, but the children there. They strike at the rhythm of teaching. They make it harder for other parents, for every teacher to hold the line that every day matters.”
She said Labour would introduce a national register of children who are not in school and use artificial intelligence to improve cooperation between education and social care.
A new number, similar to the NHS number, would also be introduced to hold children’s records across different services together. This was recommended by the Times Education Commission, a year-long inquiry into the state of education, that took evidence from dozens of experts.
Phillipson also criticised the government for failing to introduce a register, after its Schools Bill legislation was dropped. However, Ed Balls, when education secretary in 2009, tried to introduce a similar register and it was abandoned after strong opposition from the home-schooling lobby.
The proportion of persistently absent children — missing at least 10 per cent of school — was almost half of pupils at one school in Hastings, half of those at a school in Knowsley and nearly three fifths at a school on the Isle of Sheppey in 2021/22, she said.
Phillipson criticised the Conservatives’ priorities. She said: “It isn’t Winchester where half the children failed to turn up at least one day a fortnight. It isn’t Charterhouse, it isn’t Eton, it isn’t Rugby. For the Tories, the attendance crisis is always and invariably about other people’s children.”
She said Gove had at least brought a sense of energy and drive to the role when he was education secretary between 2010 and 2014, but there had since been a merry-go-round of education secretaries.
The Department for Education began a national drive this week to tackle persistent absence, with 18 new attendance hubs, in an effort to help nearly 2,000 schools address the problem.
Phillipson’s speech was attended by many senior figures in education, including Sir Kevan Collins, appointed to lead the government’s education recovery from Covid. He introduced Phillipson by saying the spending had been wholly inadequate. He had drawn up a £15 billion recovery plan for after the pandemic, but the government pledged £5 billion.
He said: “Our teachers and leaders have delivered the recovery on their own, which I think is a great shame. Too many of our children are still living with the impacts of disruption.”
The national tutoring programme to help catch-up was “half-hearted, piecemeal and not delivered well”, he added. “My advice included a proposal to open schools beyond the normal school day and offer a broad and rich programme of sport, music, drama and other social activities which I believe would re-engage children with school. The failure to re-engage families and establish the norms of education has contributed to the cuts in attendance we’re now seeing.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “Such solutions will require significant commitment and investment if we are to begin to restore education to its rightful place as a national priority. The next government will need to be bold and ambitious in its vision for education.”
He added: “When it comes to improving attendance, we need to remember that the focus cannot be on schools alone.”
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