Almost 800 schools have a class of pupils missing every day since beginning of pandemic says new research

A report by “The Centre for Social Justice” (CSJ) has highlighted that an equivalent of a whole class of children in 758 schools across the country has not fully returned to lessons since the start of the Covid pandemic. 

The CSJ has found that at least 500 children have been severely absent from school, defined as attending less than 50 per cent of the time.

Schools with the most disadvantaged intakes are ten times more likely to have a class of absent children than the most affluent. For children on free-school meals, the rate of absence is 3.4 times higher than those without – compounding inequalities. Of those children in alternative provision, an eye-watering 25 per cent are severely absent.

The CSJ report calls for the Government to reinvest the underspend from the National Tutoring Programme into getting children back into school, while appointing 2,000 school attendance practitioners to work with families.

Robert Halfon MP, Chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, said: “This is nothing short of a national disaster. The findings of this report highlight all too clearly the calamitous impact school closures have had and demonstrates a real social injustice in our education system”.