This week, Labour unveiled our long-term plan to tackle persistent school absence and drive high and rising standards in education. Levels of persistent school absence in Liverpool have almost doubled from 7961 to 15080 persistent absentees in the last five years. Staggeringly, more than one in four parents think school isn’t essential every day and we face a lost generation missing from Britain’s schools. Is there any better evidence of national decline under the Conservatives?

Being in school, learning and making friends, is the best place for every child. If children aren’t in school, we won’t get the high and rising standards all our children deserve. Absence harms every child, not just the children missing school. That’s why absence is one of the biggest challenges we must tackle to break down barriers to opportunity for every child.

Only Labour has a long-term plan to tackle this.

Labour’s Plan for Schools will:

• legislate for a new Register of Home-Schooled Pupils to keep track of those not in
mainstream schooling as part of a new package of measures to get to grips with
persistent non-attendance.
• Empower Ofsted to review absence as part of annual safeguarding spot-checks.
• Join-up existing records of children with a new number used across education, social
care and wider services that support children and families, using AI to spot trends in
absence and attendance.
• Equipping primary schools with funding to deliver evidence-based early language
interventions to ensure every child develops the strong foundation in speech and
language development that sets them up to achieve.
• Providing universal free breakfast clubs for every primary school pupil in England to
boost attendance across the country.
• Increasing mental health support through dedicated counsellors in every secondary
school and additional support across primary schools alongside delivering mental health
hubs in every community.
• Reforming the curriculum to deliver a better foundation in reading, writing and maths,
while ensuring that children do not miss out on music, sport, art and drama.