Ofsted issues warning to councils on identifying and tracking children missing from education

Ofsted has warned councils that they are failing to fulfil their legal duties to identify and check the whereabouts of children missing from education after an Ofsted report found that none of 15 English councils surveyed by the organisation felt confident that they knew about all the children living in their area in order to fulfil their duties to keep children safe.

The report, Children missing from education found that a lack of consistency in the monitoring procedures of between local authorities made it difficult for them to keep track of children as they left or moved into their areas.
Amongst the reasons found for this problem, the report identified that:

National systems for exchanging information about children moving between areas were not sufficiently effective. Evidence from this survey about the ‘School to school’ system (run by the then Department for Children, Schools and Families’ – DCSF), which includes a ‘lost pupil’ database, showed that schools did not use the database consistently and therefore its effectiveness was reduced.

Even when the local authorities had clear policies and processes, with a strong emphasis on safeguarding, if schools disregarded them, this could quickly result in children and young people becoming lost to the system. Officers in all the authorities surveyed gave examples of schools which had not followed the agreed procedures for exclusions.

A lack of clarity in the Education (Pupil registration) (England) 2006 regulations concerning communications between an independent schools and the local authority. In local authorities with academies, there was also difficulty in establishing consistent communication about children who were vulnerable to becoming missing, despite good cooperation from some of the academies.

Legislation which allows schools to take pupils off roll when they have not attended for 20 continuous school days, subject to certain conditions. Pupils who take extended holidays in term time, young carers who fail to respond to enquiries about their whereabouts and those returning from custodial sentences are therefore among those liable to lose their school place.  Local authorities, however, have few powers to stop this happening.

Ofsted's director for education and care, Patrick Leeson, told the BBC: "Local authorities and their partners need to share information effectively and more systematically to identify children and young people who are missing from education, particularly when their whereabouts are unknown.

"Children who become lost to the system not only risk failing academically but can be exposed to vulnerable situations. It is of serious concern that some schools are not following agreed procedures and legal requirements for notifying their local authorities when pupils are excluded or taken off the roll."

The full report can be downloaded by following this link: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Thematic-reports/Children-missing-from-education