I’m a teacher – and I see through Tory scare stories on the ‘ghost children’ missing from school

‘Data tells us that it is the most vulnerable children in our society who are most prone to persistent absence.’ Photograph: Image Source/Getty Images

Teachers are well accustomed to calling out names on registers and finding the odd child absent. Since the pandemic, however, numbers of “ghost children” have ballooned to what is now widely acknowledged to be a national crisis.

In England, more than 1.7 million “persistently absent” pupils missed 10% or more of their school time last autumn, according to government figures. A further 125,000 “severely absent” children spent less than half their time in school.