There’s an issue in our school system which we don’t know enough about: on any given day nearly 15,000 children are missing education. Many have legitimate reasons, such as health conditions or those who have been excluded and are awaiting placement elsewhere. But it is estimated, on any given day, that a staggering 3,000 children are not accounted for.
These figures came from Freedom of Information requests issued by the National Children’s Bureau to local authorities in January 2014. Of the 152 local authorities in England, 139 supplied data about the situation in their area. Unfortunately, the means they used to collect information and the data collected varied significantly making it hard to make comparisons. In addition, some authorities provided little or no information about the reasons for children missing education, and (worryingly) the Department for Education does not collect local data to present an overall picture.
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