This post is written by Claire Cameron, Aase Villadsen, Amelia Roberts, Jo Van Herwegen, Vivian Hill and Dominic Wyse.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is right to call for “…a national effort to tackle the epidemic of school absence so we can give all children the best start in life”, but the solutions adopted by recent successive governments, especially fining parents, have not been effective. We need a rethink in how to address attendance at school. Whether through truancy, also known as skipping school, or formal exclusion, far too many children are missing out on their right to education, with potentially lifelong consequences. As many studies show, these children are more likely to be socially disadvantaged children and those with special educational needs or mental health problems. We believe an approach based around the principles of social pedagogy offers a better way forward. Our new research highlights why this needs to start in primary school.

Our study set out to examine three things, all using the IOE-led Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a national birth cohort study following more than 19,000 children born around the millennium (September 2000–January 2002). Our data refers to 11,829 MCS children born in the UK, of whom 82.6 per cent were born in England. Firstly, we examined the individual, family and school risk factors for missing school, whether through so-called ‘truancy’ or school exclusion. Second, we examined the relationship between the school-based factor that we termed ‘connectedness’ (as measured through a composite score of the closest items covered by the MCS, such as liking school, finding school interesting, being happy at school or finding it a waste of time or tiring) and truancy or exclusion. Third, we assessed whether there was a relationship between school absence and subsequent school connectedness over time.

We found that by age 14, 13.6 per cent of children in the MCS had missed school through truanting and nine per cent had been excluded. In each case, risk factors were being male, of mixed ethnicity, being more mature in terms of puberty, having special educational needs, and having more severe mental health needs. Other risk factors were around mothers’ education, income, health and housing status, in the expected direction. While a very different research instrument, covering just the past year, a Parentkind survey published last month in fact found a much higher proportion of children, 31 per cent, had refused to go to school at least once over the preceding 12 months. But the risk factors overlapped with our own findings, including not enjoying school, or special educational or mental health needs not being adequately met in school. A similar picture is provided by, for instance, the 2019 Timpson Review of School Exclusion.

Our study found, as you would expect, a negative relationship between being absent from school due to truancy or exclusion and a sense of feeling connected to school, but also that this persisted across the primary phase into secondary schooling. We found that girls who had been excluded in primary school were less likely to feel connected to school when they were 14 years old, though there was no such relationship for boys. However, in relation to missing school through truancy, both boys and girls who truanted in primary school were less likely to feel connected to school at age 14. The fact that a sense of disconnection from schooling can persist in this way pinpoints the importance of interactions and experiences in the earliest years of primary school. Being happy and interested at ages 7 and 11 helps to protect against later school absence through truancy or exclusion. This is particularly true for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. These findings have major implications for how primary schools organise their approach to inclusion. A primary school education really does matter.

Furthermore, rather than finding the problem to be based in individual children, what our research also contributes is highlighting how school-based factors such as finding school interesting or feeling happy in school can make a difference to school attendance and, ultimately, avoiding harmful school absence later on. Independent of all other items we measured, feeling connected to school was a protective factor in terms of school exclusion. If children who say they enjoy school are less likely to be absent through truancy or exclusion, we need to focus on enabling all children to feel rewarded in school. This might also entail, in the phrase used in the Wingspread Declaration on School Connectedness, acting in a way that gives all children a “belief that adults in school care about their learning as well as about them as individuals”.

At present, policy in England, on exclusion at least, refers solely to a child’s behaviour and not to more global issues such as the reasons for the behaviour, consideration of children’s overall wellbeing or the organisation of the school. In Scotland and Wales there is a more concerted effort around a whole-school ethos of inclusion. Scotland has virtually eliminated permanent exclusions, for example. In Wales, the whole-school approach seeks to support “a sense of belonging, connectivity and engagement with school”.

We argue that a comprehensive rethink is needed to tackle the enduring and escalating problem of school absence through truancy and exclusion, particularly in England. Rather than focus on ‘at risk’ individuals and their behaviour, schools could extend their whole-school approach to focus on each child’s wellbeing as a member of a complex and constantly varying system of relationships of teachers, peers, parents, interacting in organisational systems that recognise individual needs. This would be a social pedagogic approach based on relationships, mutuality, empathy and compassion, with a practical and creative orientation to involving all students, valuing teamwork and associated expectations of and responsibility on students as well as staff across a school, not just on teachers. Investing in school connectedness in this way in the early years of primary school, so all children (and staff) feel they matter and have a valued place in school, may well reduce exclusions and absence in that phase, with benefits further down the line.

This post was originally published on the IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society blog.

Inclusion Inclusive education Millennium Cohort Study School exclusion School improvement Social pedagogy inclusive education school improvement