City pupils hit harder by soaring absence figures
MORE than 28,000 Birmingham school children were repeatedly absent from classrooms last year.
New figures from the Department for Education highlight fears that pupils in the region are falling behind following the Covid pandemic.
Birmingham children lost months of education due to coronavirus and the Government says it is investing billions to help pupils catch up.
But experts warn some youngsters are set to fall even further behind because they have failed to return to classrooms.
Official figures show 28,758 secondary pupils in Birmingham were classed as “persistently absent” in the last academic year, meaning they missed more than one in ten school days. That was 16.1% of all secondary pupils, almost one in six.
The figures only include pupils who should not have been absent, not those whose schools were closed, or were told to stay at home for reasons related to Covid-19.
But the coronavirus pandemic has clearly affected absence rates, because the number of persistently absent pupils is up by 6,000 compared
to years before the virus hit. And there were already concerns that Midlands pupils have suffered more than those in some other parts of the country as a result of the pandemic. A Department for Education study found that West Midlands primary pupils had fallen four months behind in maths by the end of the autumn 2020 term.
In London, pupils were just 1.2 months behind.
Concerns were raised by think tank the Education Policy Institute.
Executive Chairman David Laws told a Committee of MPs: “Our report on learning loss has identified much greater problems with learning loss in the north of the country and the Midlands – almost the opposite of what the Government would want to see in terms of the levellingup agenda.”
The Government’s catch-up programme, designed to help pupils who missed out on education due to Covid, appears to be more successful in some regions than others.
Research by Schools Week magazine found huge variations in takeup of the government’s National Tutoring Programme, designed to provide pupils with intensive tuition.
Just 67% of schools in the West Midlands had enrolled their pupils, compared to 96.1% in the south east.
Conservative MP Robert Halfon, Chair of the Commons Education Committee, told ministers: “These regional disparities should not be occurring.”
Birmingham City Council is working with partners including the city’s Women and Children’s Hospital to run a campaign called You’ve Been Missed, to help pupils, parents, carers and other professionals support children and young people, and help them return or stay in school.
The Government has set out plans which it says will raise standards in schools, with a particular focus on the Black Country.
The Schools White Paper includes plans for local councils to force failing schools to join multi-academy trusts, which councils will gain the power to create.
A number of Black Country councils will be among the first to implement the plan. They have been named “Education Improvement Areas”, where action is needed to raise standards.