High number of children who receive free school meals in Walsall are absent from classroom, latest figures show

Members of the council’s education overview and scrutiny committee were told how the the borough school absence rate was higher than both the regional and national figures.

Further detail revealed boys were more likely to miss lessons than girls while a larger proportion of youngsters in receipt of free meals were absent from school compared with children who didn’t receive them.

Education bosses said work is being carried out with schools to look at reasons for poor pupil attendance and how to address the issue.

Data presented to Thursday’s showed the absence rate in the borough rose to 5.4 per cent in 2020/21 compared with 4.9 per cent the previous year, ranking Walsall at 136 out of 152 local authority’s – a fall of 33 places from 2019.

The regional absence rate for 2020/21 was 4.9 per cent while the national rate is even lower at 4.6 per cent.

Persistent absence is also higher than other local authorities with Walsall recording 14.9 per cent compared with 13.2 per cent regionally and 12.1 per cent nationally.

In the case of children who receive free school meals, there was an absence rate of 8.06 per cent with the persistent absence figure standing at 25.34 per cent – both higher than the local and national figures.

There was better news in permanent exclusions which had fallen to 42 in 2020/21 from 71 the year before. But the data revealed 32 of those were children in receipt of free school meals.

Suspensions were also falling with 1,498 for 941 pupils served in 2020/21 compared with 2,106 for 1,195 children in 2019.

Helena Kucharczyk, head of performance improvement, said: “We are higher than regional and national neighbours.

“We always have been higher but post Covid that rate of absence has increased more than it has for our comparators.

“Persistent absence is also a lot higher as well. It is mostly in secondary schools. It is slightly higher in primary but we’re much closer and the gap is larger for secondary.

“Overall absence is also higher for boys than it is for girls. It’s higher for children who have special educational needs but the reasons for that are well understood because there are medical issues or anxiety related reasons.

“However, absence for children in receipt of free school meals is also significantly higher than those who aren’t.

“The knowledge around that is less solid. There is less research. There is some work to be done as to why those children in Walsall are struggling to maintain attendance at the same rate as their peers who aren’t in receipt of free school meals.

“Is that to do with reasons of poverty, not being able to get to school, not having the right uniform or equipment or are there other reasons driving that?

“Part of the work we need to do around attendance is related to looking at that.”

Rob Thomas, head of access at Walsall Council said: “We recognise where we are at regarding attendance and we’re working with a Department for Education strategic advisor and we’ve formed a working party of schools and senior officers within the authority to look at strategies to improve.

“One of the strands we are working on is challenge and support meetings for all schools on a termly basis.

“This involves officers from the school attendance team visiting schools to explore reasons for persistent absences and looking at attendance policies.

“It’s the first term we have started that and it’s working well. We’ve had over 90 per cent acceptance for schools to partake in those meetings.”