Tag Archives: children’s social services

Children missing from schooling

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This is going to be one of my ‘nerdier’ posts. Children missing education are a small but important group of young people. In the autumn term of 2025/26, the DfE estimated that there were around 34,700 such pupils in England – down for 39,200 in the previous autumn term of 2024/25. Across the whole year 2024/25, some 143,000 children were estimated by the DfE as missing education at some point in the year. Children missing education: methodology – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The DfE relies upon local authorities for the collection of the data. The re-organisation of the shire counties over the next few years may well affect data quality, where new ‘unitary authorities’ are created and new teams will need to be assembled. So, how are ‘missing children’ defined?

Definition of children missing education

CME does include children of compulsory school age who are not registered at a school and are not receiving suitable education elsewhere, even if these children:

• Are in the process of applying for a school place, even children within the first 15 days of the application process

• Have been offered a school place for a future date but have not yet started

• Are receiving EHE, if this education is unsuitable

• Have been recorded as CME for an extended period: for example, where their whereabouts is unclear or unknown4 When EHE should be deemed CME An EHE child whose education is deemed unsuitable should no longer be classified as an EHE child and should be classified as CME.

Section 436A of the Education Act 1996, is a duty on local authorities to make arrangements to try and identify children of compulsory school age who are not registered pupils at schools and are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school. Although there is no legal obligation on local authorities to classify a child as CME at a particular stage of the statutory process under sections 436A and 437 of the Act, we would expect a local authority classify a child as CME once they have deemed that the child is not receiving suitable education (which would include having insufficient information to reach such a conclusion). If local authorities have not had an opportunity to assess whether a child is receiving suitable education, that does not mean that the child should automatically be classified as not receiving suitable education. Not knowing does not mean the child is not being suitably educated, though the local authority may ultimately reach this conclusion if they have asked for information and not received satisfactory responses. Elective Home Education and Children Missing Education

How assiduous are local authorities at collecting this information? Difficult to say, but it is interesting that 11 of the 33 London boroughs have a rate of 0.1%, the best possible. This is along with six local authorities in the North East, and five counties. However, no local authority in the East of England features in those LAs with a 0.1% return, the best being 0.3 and the worst 1.0%.

Overall, the average autumn term rate fell from 0.5% in 2023/24 – the first year of collection to 0.4% in 2025/26.

Why does the issue of children missing education concern me. My posts on Jacob’s Law shows why I thinking understanding the problem is important Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson

My suggestion last summer was for a virtual school for all such children otherwise classified as missing education A Virtual School for those missing school? | John Howson This could be especially important for young people with SEND awaiting a school place as well as those that move into an area mid-year when all school places in their year group are full.

I would encourage local politicians to check their percentage of missing children, and how well officers track such children. It was an Ombudsman’s report that originally sparked my interest in this issue.  Education is a fundamental Human Right | John Howson

The original paper to Oxfordshire’s Scrutiny Committee in 2019 highlighted 9,600 records that were incomplete at that time and the exercise Oxfordshire officers took to update their records!  aebhdfh I wonder how many local authorities have conducted such a thorough examination of their records.

Hopefully, now the DfE is collecting data, more attention is being paid to children that might slip though the net.

Will local government reorganisation pose a risk to Children’s Services?

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I don’t often comment on Children’s Services in local government, preferring to stick to education about which I hopefully know more. However, having served a period of time as a Cabinet member for Children’s Services in a shire county, I couldn’t resist reading the report published last week by the DfE from the commissioner put into Devon County Council to oversee the improvement oft heir Children’s services.

There were two interesting comments from that report caught my eye.

The first deal with the issue of local government re-organisation: not strictly part of the Commissioner’s brief, but an interesting and thoughtful comment

“Although not in the remit of this particular piece of work it would be wrong not to highlight a second significant risk. The current round of Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) consultations is already consuming large amounts of political and operational time. However, that isn’t the main risk. The bigger concern would be for any recommendation which leads to the break up and fragmentation of Devon CC and the existing arrangements for children’s services. Given the positive improvement trajectory I have seen and identified in this report and the critical importance of having a well led and well functioning children’s services for the local population anything that breaks that model would risk stopping the existing work in its tracks with an even bigger risk that things would quickly slip backwards. As stated, this is not strictly in my brief to comment on, but the potential impact of LGR on services that are now showing signs of improvement should be appropriately considered by government as part of their decision making process.”

The second comment was, of course, interesting to me as a Liberal Democrat.

“Following the recent local elections Devon now has new political leadership. The Lib Dem group have made an impressive ‘fresh start’ and they are very clear that they will be judged on the improvements they are determined to see in Children’s Services. Children’s services are undoubtedly the top priority for Devon County Council. Three cabinet members (including the Leader) hold portfolios across Children’s services – Education, Lead Member and SEND. My observations of two cabinet meetings and scrutiny alongside additional face to face meetings assures me that the Leader and his team are very serious about bringing about the improvements needed.”

Commissioner’s report on children’s services

Managing a Children’s Services is probably a much more complex task than managing adult social services in local authorities, as Children’s Services encompasses not only the whole of the remaining education functions of a local authority, but also children in care or at risk, plus youth justice, and youth services, as well as relationships with the NHS over SEND. This wide range of activities may be why so many local authorities have received adverse reports over the past few years.

Indeed, an analysis of the reports by the size of the authority may well help to support the view of Devon’s commissioner about local government review. Is there a minimum size for a Children’s Service to function effectively, and does it need good political oversight?

A broken system: not just mismanagement

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When searching the DfE website this morning for the latest numbers about schools and pupils to allow me to compare the number of teachers per school for different subjects, I was distracted into looking at the number of ‘open notices’ from the DfE to Councils across England. Currently they total around 30 such notices and there are others that have been closed in recent times. These notices refer to the provision of either special needs (SEND) or children’s social services.

There really must be something wrong with a system where nearly 20%, or one in five, of all upper tier local authorities have such notices that are issued to councils for ‘poor’ or ‘inadequate’ performance. I had expected the majority of such notices to be for SEND services, but in fact half are for Children’s Social Services. This raises the question of whether in some authorities, and especially smaller unitary authorities, there is the funding to cope with both SEND and Children’s Social Services?

Of the local authorities with ‘open’ improvement notices for children’s social services, most are small metropolitan districts of unitary authorities.: Liverpool, Nottingham City and the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire are the exceptions. The pattern for SEND notices is different, with six counties, four metropolitan districts, four unitary councils and one London borough with ‘open notices.

What is striking about both lists is the geographical split. The relative absence from the list of well-funded London boroughs – only three appear, and only one in the SEND list, compared with eight metropolitan districts really is worthy of note and discussion. Comparing the distribution with my recent report on pupil teacher ratios does suggest that funding, or the lack of it, may play a part.  

If the 16 other authorities with closed notices since 2020 are added to those with ‘open’ notices, then almost a third of all local authorities have been on the ‘naughty step’ with the DfE and Care Quality commission so far in this decade.

If that percentage and the split between types of authorities doesn’t raise questions about why and why some authorities are more likely to be faced with improvement notices than others, then I think we have a serious lack of inquiry.

The relationship between the size of an authority and competence to deliver high quality services is important, both because of the Reform Party’s pledge to cut out waste, and the Labour government’s intention to reform local government. Both need to be seen in light of this list. Is bigger better, or is local government outside London just not well-enough funded

Of course, I must declare a personal interest, since I look over as Cabinet Member for Children’s Service (excluding SEND) after Oxfordshire received a ‘notice’ in the autumn of 2023 about the quality of its SEND provision.

To some extent with SEND, authorities are at the mercy of the NHS, over which they have little power, and that relationship with SEND needs to be investigated thoroughly. Penalizing democratically elected local government for the failing of a nationally run NHS is neither fair not equitable. That the government’s funding of the High Needs Block may add to local government’s problems also needs to be taken into account. Oxfordshire is in the bottom 30% for SEND funding.