‘A 10 per cent drop in attendance equates to dropping a GCSE grade’

Walk into the foyer of most British schools and you’ll be greeted with very clear messaging on the vital importance of attendance. Miss even one day of school in normal times and you’ll quickly have someone on the phone wanting to know the reason.

That our children have so far missed almost three months of face-to-face education is enough of a scandal already. That this looks set to continue beyond even September is little short of oppression.

Those who are suffering most, of course, are not the children we see pictured on the news, seated at their kitchen peninsulas and doing their schoolwork on laptops, the bifolding doors behind them open on to a nice big garden. It’s the bottom 36 per cent we should be worried about.

When I heard that all schools may not reopen fully even in September, I felt devastated and desperate. Educational research shows if a child’s attendance drops by 10 per cent, that equates to dropping a grade at GCSE.

With nine weeks away already, we’re looking at the loss of three grades for those not receiving a programme of decent home schooling. Children lacking access to computers, the internet or enough space to work in will drop so far down the scale of attainment, their prospects will be damaged forever.

The impact of such prolonged absence cannot be overestimated. It’s not just the academic side of things, either. For children not receiving healthy meals at home, school breakfasts and lunches provided a great deal of nutrition.

For the bottom third of young people, school can be where they feel safe; a place where there’s order for those with chaotic lives.

We already know that children regress during the long summer holidays. Some even regress in the course of a normal weekend. Just think what effect, then, an absence of six months or more will have on the most vulnerable.

The most obvious solution is to reopen schools for all pupils as soon as we can. We should also rethink education as a 365-day-a-year process, and we need to shake up the examination system. We must move to rolling assessment, which would help those across the spectrum, but especially those at the bottom. In my role as a consultant, I have helped devise such a non-exam-based process for examining English, and it’s ready to roll out now. We’re still waiting for the Government to engage.

In the meantime, however, we must get kids back into classrooms. If not we risk casting a whole generation adrift.

It’s the bottom 36 per cent we should be worried about

John Nield, educational consultant and former secondary schoolteacher and AQA principal examiner