300,000 children may be missing from education

A new report by the Education Policy Institute finds that as many as 300,000 children may be missing from education entirely in 2023. This is a 40 per cent increase from 2017.

This figure was found by comparing GP registrations with school registrations and data on pupils in registered home education for the first time.

The research found that up to 400,000 children are estimated to be not in school, a 50 per cent increase. According to available data the number of formally registered home-educated children has increased by over 100 per cent from 2017 to almost 95,000 children in 2023.

Additionally, using Department for Education data, findings show that over 50,000 pupils ever registered in a state school, or around 8 per cent of the cohort, leave the system and are not in a mainstream school, alternative provision or an independent school by year 11. Schools are not required to record the reasons for pupils leaving their rolls, and it is not known how many of these exits are due to migration out of the country.

Certain groups are at a higher risk of exiting the English education system permanently: 75 per cent of Traveller pupils and 50 per cent of Gypsy/Roma pupils, and almost a fifth of persistently disadvantaged pupils and permanently excluded pupils, and a pproximately 1 in 8 care-experienced pupils.

The number of system exits rises significantly through secondary school and peaks in year 10 before pupils sit their GCSEs. Around a fifth of all exits through the primary and secondary phases occur in year 10.

Finally, the report looks at pupils who leave a mainstream state school for at least one term but are re-registered by year 11. Pupils with social, emotional, or mental health difficulties and care-experienced children were more than twice as likely to miss a period of mainstream education during the primary or secondary phases, compared with the overall cohort.

The report recommends that the government should build on their existing plans to create a register of ‘children not in school’. By integrating data from education, health and other relevant administrative data sources, the ONS could maintain a more complete register on all children in contact with services in England.

Schools should also be required to record reasons for removing pupils from their rolls. This would allow better oversight of illegal exclusions, including off-rolling; the role played by mental health issues or disengagement from education in system exits; along with a better understanding of the proportion of system exits related to out-migration from the country.