At St John Henry Newman Catholic college, a state secondary in Oldham, a minibus goes out twice each morning and collects children who don’t want to come to school. But headteacher Glyn Potts knows that persistent absence – which has mushroomed across the country since Covid – often requires more than a lift to solve.
“We had a number of children who stopped coming in on certain days,” he says. “When we explored it we found mums who had taken extra shifts at the factory or nursing home to keep food on the table and the older child was staying at home so someone could collect the youngest from primary school.”
