Children with anxiety are more likely to be kept off school now increasing numbers of parents are working from home, the schools minister suggested.
Nick Gibb said that post-pandemic it is easier for parents to allow their children to stay at home, whereas previously they would have had no choice but to take them to school.
Mr Gibb was quizzed by MPs on the education committee about the rise in the number of children who are persistently absent from school.
Robin Walker, chair of the committee, said MPs were concerned about the “stubbornly high” levels of persistent absence which have been slow to decline since the pandemic.
He said primary school headteachers have told him parents are now more inclined to talk about anxiety as a reason for children to be away from school “where perhaps before the pandemic they were more likely to say their child was a little bit worried about going to school but still send them.”
Mr Gibb said: “It is easier for parents to allow their child to remain home if they are working from home. Whereas in the past a child with anxiety and both parents had stressful jobs they had to get to by 8 o’clock there really is no choice, the child has to go in.”
He added that there is a real mental health problem in schools which has got worse “as a consequence of lockdown and children being away from their peers during the pandemic.”
Latest figures show that in the autumn term last year, 24.4 per cent of pupils were persistently absent. This was more than double the 10.9 per cent persistent absence rate of autumn 2018/19, before the pandemic.
The percentage of children classed as “severely absent” – which is missing half their time at school – was 1.7 per cent in autumn last year – this was again more than double the pre-pandemic level when 0.7 per cent of pupils were severely absent in autumn 2018/19.
Mr Gibb said one of the reasons absence rates have been slow to improve was illness, and pointed to an outbreak of flu and scarlet fever that has hit schools.
He said: “There are some longer term consequences of the lockdown that concern us. One is that parents are slightly more cautious about sending their child into school with a mild cold and we are trying to emphasise the point that it’s the fever that matters.”
Mr Gibb spoke to MPs on the committee for the first time since regaining his post as schools minister last year. He said since coming back to office in October he noticed a change in why children were absent, saying: “It wasn’t just the unauthorised holidays and so on. It was an increase illness, an increase in barriers to attendance.”
He added that children were affected by being “stuck at home for quite a big chunk of the last two years due to the pandemic.” He said some children suffered from mental health issues that caused them to fall behind in their work, and some were frightened of going to school because they had fallen so far behind.
