It went something like this. John (not his real name) said he might be leaving school at the end of term. He gave us a name of the school he said he would be attending. John didn’t return at the start of the next term so we assumed he’d left although it was odd his parents hadn't said anything. We sent off his GCSE coursework to the new school. A couple of weeks later we received it back. John was not a pupil there.
We never found out where he’d gone.
It brought home to me how easy it was for children to disappear. That was twenty years ago. The problem still persists. And it’s a serious safeguarding issue, says
Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief HMI.
Ofsted has completed focused inspection of schools in Tower Hamlets and Birmingham. It was during these that Ofsted became concerned about the possibility of ‘high numbers of pupils’ being deleted from school registers without schools or local authorities having any idea where they had gone.
Sir Michael said most schools and LAs complied with the law* but inspectors had found worrying examples of ‘inconsistent’ recording of children leaving, poor communication between schools and LAs, and ‘inadequate systems’ for tracking pupils leaving independent schools.
Most disturbingly, inspectors noted schools had no legal duty to keep records about where pupils go after being crossed off admission registers. And LAs aren’t required to check where these children are.
Inspectors found that when schools recorded reasons for pupils leaving, these were often vague such as ‘gone to live with grandparents’, ‘moved to Manchester’, ‘gone to Libya’ or ‘moved abroad’.
This casual attitude was putting children at risk, Sir Michael wrote. It made it ‘very difficult, if not impossible’ for schools and LAs to identify children in danger from the majority who would be experiencing a suitable education in state or registered independent schools or being home-schooled.
‘We cannot be sure that some of the children whose destinations are unknown are not being exposed to harm, exploitation or the influence of extremist ideologies. We do not know whether these children are ending up in unregistered provision,’ Sir Michael told Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan.
Sir Michael urged Morgan to review and ‘considerably’ strengthen the law around in-year transfers. He wants heads to be required to record details of onward destinations, send the information to their LA and highlight cases causing concern. The tougher requirements should lay down what action LAs must take when onward destinations aren’t known.
Whether Morgan will take note of Sir Michael’s strong urging is unclear. But this is one example of an important issue, along with teacher supply and school funding, which should be in the minds of the Education Secretary and her ministers. However, it appears pushing the Education and Adoption Bill through Parliament is more important than tackling such concerns. But children are at increased risk when politicians’ minds focus on school structure rather than safeguarding.
*Education (Pupil Registration) Regulations 2005 (particularly Regulations 8 and 12).
Comments
Do EWOs still exist in all LAs?
EWOs have no rights of entry or to any school data in the case of Academies and Free Schools do they?
It would be madness if Independent Schools (fee paying and state funded) provide data separately and on a different basis to LA Community Schools.
The Chief Inspector is absolutely right that these data need to be collected and the movement of children documented with intervention as appropriate.
Can it be done in the present fragmented system? I have my doubts.
Janet says "It brought home to me how easy it was for children to disappear."
Disappear? From whose line of sight? Almost certainly NOT that of the family......
The law is clear when it comes to home schooling, for instance. It is only necessary to inform the LA you are home schooling if you remove the child from a special school. Otherwise there is no legal requirement to inform.
That is as it should be. Where children are enrolled (or not....) is for the parents to decide and know...... no one else.
There seems little doubt that significant numbers of children are at risk of FGM, forced marriages and enrolment at unregistered institutions that would fall short of required standards in a number of areas, not to mention honour killings (or other murders), enslavement, prostitution/sexual exploitation and forced labour.
I personally think the rules on home schooling need updating.
It is legally established that the state has the duty to protect children if their safety or human rights are threatened.
In my view EWOs used to do an essential job. In my experience they were always very professional and skilled in making appropriate interventions when necessary.
They are much missed.
As a national community we would be heading down a very dangerous difficult road if every child and vulnerable young person was tracked. How tightly, how often and who defines what constitutes an appropriate environment? This scenario would smack of a draconian approach that limits personal liberty, choice and freedoms.
Do not advocate tracking, I do not have alternatives either.
It is hard enough for schools to perform their statutory safeguarding duties for the students they have on roll. Asking them to be responsible for students who have "moved to Manchester" is absurd. As for Ofsted being in the front line of the War on Terror..... absurd. Wilshaw is just empire building.
I am not sure moving the responsibility of tracking children's whereabouts to head teachers is the solution. Ultimately, parents are responsible for ensuring their children are in education and the onus should be on them to inform the LA of their child's whereabouts. Perhaps, like registering a birth, it should be made a criminal offence not to register your child at a suitable school within ten days of moving home in the UK. I am not sure how anyone could police movements out of the country, particularly when some families do 'moonlight' flits back to their country of origin.
I suspect that parents still claim Child Benefit for children who appear to have 'disappeared' from the education system so that should provide one method of tracking them down. Bit of joined up thinking from some government departments wouldn't go amiss.
In the mid 1990s we took a number of Kosovar refugees into our school. One family moved to Manchester. This was tracked by our EWO service. Within six months the family moved back and the child was readmitted back into our school. At no time was the child not a responsibility of either the Cumbria LA or the Manchester LA.
This doesn't seem like big brother to me - just LAs accepting their responsibility to ensure children are safe and helping parents get the best from the (then) joined up education system. The key staff were EWOs.
We don't have a joined up education system any more. We have a fragmented one, where even if EWOs existed then Academies and Free Schools would not be obliged to co-operate with them and LAs would not now provide the service for them unless the non-LA School purchased it.
I don't need to add that it's completely barmy and dysfunctional. And all the fault of New Labour allowing independent Academy schools to take over valuable state owned community assets.
It does not follow that in pointing out that a large number of children are deleted from school registers and the system is lax in discovering where they've gone that Ofsted is in the front line of the War on Terror. The possibility of radicalisation was but one of Wilshaw's concerns. As Roger highlighted, there is also the problems of forced marriages and taking girls ways to have their genitals mutilated. Added to these are the possibilities of children being hidden from view and being abused, neglected or used as domestic servants.
Now what about a G4S Child Tracking Agency with executives on huge salaries and the low paid operatives on zero hours contracts only being paid when summoned to do a particular job?
Since 2010 this has become a rather more difficult area activity because of the Coalition and now Conservative drive on quasi-independent state schools who are not accountable to local authorities.
I think the radicalisation spectre is covered by the requirements of the Prevent strategy, which is not tracking or reporting pupils movements but rather the reporting of concerns. In terms of FGM this too is already covered by CP and Safeguarding procedures and like the former does not entail tracking pupil movements but instead focuses on reporting concerns.
Following her query, the local authority contacted the school and the children returned to their classes.
Pupils are not just disappearing because parents are not tracking their children. In local authority schools poor attendance figures would have been queried, even in London where children may have come from several different local authorities. If schools don't have a responsibility for safeguarding, who does? Putting all the responsibility on parents just isn't good enough, particularly if the child needs to be made safe from the parents.
How would tracking stop them going to Syria? Would they be stopped from boarding a plane? How would it prevent them entering Syria via another country?
Alternatively, the prescribe departure report must in all cases be reported to the LA who whenever practicable will have responsibility to verify arrival at the destination and/or report concerns to the local police for necessary action.
Don't tell me it can't done - it used to happen, or something very like it.
Will the government take the route that works - of course not. The reason is ideological. They don't want elected LAs to have any essential role in the national education system. They are determined to privatise it, regardless of the consequences.
I am not convinced that any opposition to coordinating pupil movements through LAs irrespective of the type of school has anything to do with government ideology relating to having an "essential role in the national education system". Why? The issue to hand is about Child Protection/Safeguarding which transcend education.
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