Why are so many children still missing school?

While Britain’s school children are currently in the midst of their six-week summer holiday, you won’t hear many politicians or educationalists revive an idea that was fashionable only a decade ago – shortening the summer break and extending the school day.

Back in 2013, then education secretary Michael Gove argued that pupils in England spent too little time in school compared with our international competitors. Successive governments proceeded to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in breakfast clubs, after-school provision and extended school hours, allowing them to remain open until 6pm. The assumption was simple – more time in school was better for children.

Today, the mood could hardly be more different. During the recent heatwave, more than 1,000 schools closed fully or partially. Whatever the practical justification in individual cases, the scale of the closures illustrates how far attitudes towards attendance have shifted. We have travelled from a demand for more school to calls for less school or even no school at all.

The drive to extend the school day was never simply about raising academic standards. It also reflected a belief that schools should play an ever larger role in children’s lives, often at the expense of parents’ influence and authority. Yet, for all its flaws, that agenda rested on one important assumption: regular school attendance was intrinsically beneficial and should be expected of almost every child.

That confidence has weakened. The legacy of the Covid lockdowns, combined with a growing emphasis on wellbeing and special educational needs, has reshaped cultural and political attitudes towards attendance. The lockdowns during the pandemic did more than interrupt schooling – they also changed the way many parents thought about the necessity of school attendance itself.

Before the pandemic, attending school every day was widely regarded as a non-negotiable civic expectation. During lockdowns, however, millions of children were forced to spend months learning from home. And they did so with the full encouragement of the government. Although few would argue that remote education was an adequate substitute for classroom teaching, the experience demonstrated that schooling could, at least temporarily, take place outside the school gates. In doing so, it weakened the assumption that physical attendance was always essential. Some parents began questioning whether daily attendance was really all that important. That change in mindset has proved remarkably durable.

Indeed, before the pandemic, 11 per cent of pupils in England were persistently absent from school. In the immediate post-lockdown years, the proportion persistently absent rose dramatically. According to the most recent figures (from the 2024-25 school year), 18.1 per cent of pupils are now persistently absent – or around 1.34million children.

Of course, no policymaker or politician would argue that schools are undesirable places for children. Yet there is increasing acceptance that, for some pupils, attendance should be flexible. Aspects of school life – crowded corridors, sensory overload, bullying, anxiety, examination pressure or unmet special-education needs – are said to make being in school more harmful than beneficial for certain pupils. This represents a significant shift in thinking. Attendance is no longer treated primarily as a universal expectation but increasingly as something that can be negotiated. The debate is no longer about how to keep children in school for longer, but under what circumstances it is acceptable for them not to be there at all.

Schools inspectorate Ofsted still expects schools to promote good attendance, but it has increasingly emphasised how schools support those struggling to attend. The result is a subtle but significant shift: attendance is no longer presented simply as an obligation but as something that may need to be balanced against a child’s emotional or psychological needs.

There is also an inconsistency in official policy. Parents are repeatedly warned that every day of absence harms children’s education, yet there is no comprehensive national record of the occasions when schools themselves close or send pupils home. Closures caused by genuinely dangerous weather or major infrastructure failures are entirely understandable. The question is whether there is enough transparency, consistent national thresholds and accountability when schools close for reasons that are less clear cut.

The journey from extending the school day to accepting widespread school closures is profoundly significant. It reflects a loss of confidence in the idea that school attendance is, in itself, a public good. It is a sign of a society that no longer seems certain that children should be in the classroom in the first place.

Neil Davenport is a writer based in London.