The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, was accused of being “flippant” and unhelpful by school leaders, after suggesting that headteachers should personally collect absent pupils to help solve England’s “crisis” in school attendance.
Keegan told Sky News that headteachers “have a duty” to ensure that their pupils were regularly attending school, in the face of statistics showing that attendance rates in England have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
