Ahead of the 2025 Spending Review, School-Home Support (SHS) welcomes the Government’s ambition to tackle the school attendance crisis, but warns about how school cuts may damage efforts by school leaders to address the crisis.
- SHS welcomes the Government’s commitment to addressing the school attendance crisis as evident in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the expansion of free school meals and Bridget Phillipson’s recent speech.
- SHS are concerned though that these efforts will only be undermined by school cuts at a time when we should be building on the schools bill by investing in targeted interventions to fill in policy gaps.
- SHS is calling for targeted funding in whole family support for vulnerable pupils as a long term solution to the school attendance crisis.
- Investment in whole family support will help schools to address low attendance and deliver long term solutions for schools, families and communities.
- Cuts to school budgets stretch teachers, lower the quality of school buildings, narrow the curriculum, and lead to staff reductions in pastoral teams and support staff, all of which contribute to disengagement and lost learning.
- The cost of cuts to spending in schools in the longer term is clear – without targeted investment in early interventions and the support staff who deliver them, absence will rise and vulnerable pupils will be left behind.
Today national education charity School-Home Support are warning that cuts to unprotected spending in schools risk undermining the Government’s plans to address the school attendance crisis.
SHS welcomes the ambition and actions taken by the Government to tackle the school attendance crisis. Many of the measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the recent expansion of free school meals and other initiatives will go some way in addressing the school attendance crisis. The Government is right to place the school attendance crisis at the heart of the Opportunity Mission and SHS welcome the recent comments by Bridget Phillipson on the importance of school attendance.
Nonetheless, without the additional funding to deliver whole family support for the children and families at the heart of this crisis, the Government’s ambitions will not be realised. The Spending Review should build on the Schools Bill by investing in targeted interventions to fill in policy gaps.
Schools are facing huge funding shortfalls affecting the capacity to support at-risk pupils
Schools are facing huge funding shortfalls in the Spending Review unless the Government increases spending – which to adhere to its fiscal rules, would require additional growth, additional tax increases, or more borrowing. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that without additional investment, school costs are set to rise by 6.5% but mainstream school funding per pupil is only expected to grow by 5.8% in cash terms. This leaves schools facing a funding shortfall. School leaders are doing all they can but without additional funding that will allow for more targeted support, efforts to address school absence will be hampered.
The NAHT recently revealed that 98% of school leaders say they don’t have sufficient funding to meet the needs of pupils. Schools need to be supported by the Government if they are to properly support the vulnerable families and children impacted by the school attendance crisis.
Cuts to school budgets will lead to teachers being too stretched to engage all students, with disengagement inevitably leading to missed school days. With less funding, it is harder to make schools a place where young people feel happy and safe with a curriculum that speaks to their strengths and interests.
Funding shortfalls often lead to staff reductions in pastoral teams making it harder to provide early interventions for at-risk students, before circumstances worsen and more learning is lost to absence. Support staff are key as they play a vital role in identifying and addressing the root causes of absence. Yet with schools facing significant funding shortfalls, support staff may be a second order thought.
This all comes 5 years on from the pandemic with the latest attendance data for 2023/24 revealing that severe absence rates have risen by 184% since the pandemic and persistent absence rates remain at 1 in 5.
Targeted investment in whole family support is needed to address the school attendance crisis
The school attendance crisis is costing our country and our young people dearly – research has shown school attendance to be a vehicle for social mobility through its impact on lifetime earnings, educational attainment and a pupil’s likelihood of being Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET).
To move the dial on school attendance, we need to see targeted funding in whole family support delivered through schools, to reach at-risk pupils and deliver long term solutions to the school attendance crisis we face.
Funding early intervention support too prevents issues from escalating by addressing the underlying causes of absence and delivering lasting solutions for the children, families and school communities. In turn, tackling school attendance helps us create a workforce with the skills to make the economy grow.
School attendance is rightly a key part of the Government’s Opportunity Mission and it has the ability to be part of the Growth mission too. Achieving these missions won’t be easy but pursuing cuts to school budgets will undermine the Government’s efforts.
Jaine Stannard, School-Home Support CEO said:
“With the Spending Review taking place this week, School-Home Support reiterates our continued support for the actions taken by the Government and the ambition it has shown in addressing the school attendance crisis.
But we are urging the Government against cutting unprotected funding in schools as this will only damage the ability of schools to address the school attendance crisis.
We welcome the Government’s measures to improve school attendance through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and wider initiatives but these must be coupled with proper financial support for schools if we are to shift the dial on the school attendance crisis.
The Spending Review should build on the measures in the Bill and address policy gaps in tackling absence. It needs to prioritise targeted investment in early intervention support for schools to provide more intensive support for at-risk children to prevent more complex absence cases from escalating. This is key to reducing our national problem with severe absence which is getting worse not better.”