B

Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 7 May 2025

Debate

Pupil Absenteeism

Contribution

My noble friend is absolutely right that we have seen big increases in the number of children who are missing school, both those who are persistently absent and those who are severely absent, as I said in my earlier response. My noble friend is right that, particularly to deal with children who are severely absent, you need to bring together a range of properly resourced agencies to work on the individual plans I talked about in the previous answer. That is one of the reasons why we are investing £500 million in children’s social care and in prevention, so that we can ensure that severely absent children are routinely assessed for family help, bringing together those services in the way she outlined.

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