England’s secondary schools are Dickensian. No wonder children are staying away

The education secretary leaves Downing Street in September 2023. She is ‘laying the fault [for truancy] squarely at the front door of the home’. Photograph: Tejas Sandhu/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

This year’s most alarming statistic so far is that one parent in four thinks it is fine for children to skip school. Persistent absenteeism in England has doubled since lockdown, from 10% to 22% of pupils. A third of a million parents are now being fined as a result. With working from home now good for grownups, the habit is clearly spreading to schoolchildren.

This week both education secretary, Gillian Keegan, and the opposition’s Bridget Phillipson are pushing proposals to combat truancy. They are laying the fault squarely at the front door of the home. Nonattendance is due variously to poverty, parental neglect or rising evidence of stress and mental illness among teenagers, which has reportedly doubled since lockdown.