Nadia Qayyum and Anne Greaves are patrolling the streets of Bedford, hoping to solve their next case. “A car’s in the driveway, looks like someone’s home,” Nadia says as they prepare to knock on the front door and ask questions.
An anxious-looking woman answers the door. “Hello, is everything all right? Where have you been? We’ve been trying to get hold of you,” Qayyum asks in a friendly but firm tone.
It is a missing person investigation, of a certain kind. Greaves and Qayyum are part of a new breed of education welfare and attendance officers increasingly being employed by state schools across England with the urgent task of repairing the fall-off in student attendance since the Covid pandemic.
The pair work for Queen’s Park academy, a large primary school in Bedford, and are on the frontline dealing with a national issue: convincing parents that the best place for their child is in school regularly, and then investigating when that doesn’t happen.
This Tuesday the pair are visiting the home of a pupil who is absent for a second consecutive day and whose parents have not been in touch. Multiple phone calls to the parents have not been answered – and concern deepened when a call to a parent’s mobile had an international ringtone.
