The reasons why young people don’t go to school are many and complex. However, one indisputable fact is that, since the pandemic ended, a great many more young people haven’t been attending school. The figures across the UK are fairly uniform, at least in state schools, and they show that the rate of non-attendance has more or less doubled from about 4 or 5 per cent to 8 or 10 per cent.

Of course, it’s not that simple. Most children continue to go more or less every day, and some are chronic non-attenders. Some don’t attend for weeks on end, or not at all, and some attend frequently but only for parts of days, or don’t ever come in on a Friday. It’s an area of real concern to teachers and parents and, no matter how difficult it will prove to be, something needs to be done.

I was going to say “… because if you don’t go to school, you can’t learn” but that, fairly obviously, isn’t true. Some young people never go to school because their parents choose to educate them at home and many of them do fine, at least academically. During the pandemic, when the online offer from schools was, completely understandably, vastly erratic, some middle-class school students actually had a very enriched curriculum with their professorial mums and artist dads.

And if you’re clever enough, you can get by through self-study. I spoke to somebody on a train recently who claimed that in his final year at school (which was entirely post-pandemic) he attended for 23 per cent of the time, but managed 3 As at Advanced Higher. He was, of course, 17 at that time, so absolutely nothing was done about it.

That, of course, is the point. If you’re a school pupil who is clever or rich or interested enough and/or your parents are in a position to really push you, the effects of not attending school can at least be ameliorated. So not attending school most affects those young people who really need to be at school, and it’s a significant factor in the widening of the poverty-related academic attainment gap. And the situation doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

I asked some senior teachers in state schools why young people didn’t attend. The four answers that came up regularly were “anxiety”, “mental illness”, “negligence” and “fear”. Some of these things have been worsened by the pandemic. Parents may very reasonably be less willing to send children with mild medical symptoms to school; but also some parents may positively have enjoyed having their children around them more, and some young people who may have never liked school may have had those feelings entrenched by months without the pressures, academic and social, that school attendance inevitably creates.

We all know that mental health services for young people have huge waiting lists, and that the provision of special education places for young people who can’t cope with school has been cut back. However, we need a new strategy soon. In the medium term, we may have thousands of young Scots who, having not attended school, find it hard – or impossible – to cope with college, university or the workplace.

Not all children will be returning to school with their classmates when the summer holidays end (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Currently what generally happens is this, if Jimmy, 13, doesn’t go to school, though practice varies from school to school, there is an expectation that a parent or carer will phone in to explain Jimmy’s absence. About 50 per cent of parents, apparently, don’t do this, so the school attempts to contact them. A long time may pass.

An education welfare officer becomes involved if Jimmy’s attendance falls beneath 85 per cent over a period of time (that would be about 30 days in a typical school year). According to a deputy head I spoke to, the welfare officer is allowed to be “vaguely threatening” about the potential legal consequences when talking to parents.

Then, if things don’t get any better, the parents may be summoned to an area attendance advisory group, which is convened once a term, and at which two senior staff from other schools will explain the consequences if Jimmy doesn’t start to attend. Then, eventually, the law steps in, in the form of the children’s reporter; a Children’s Panel may convene. Often, I gather, there is a lot of sympathy for the parents, because Jimmy may well be on a waiting list to see a mental health professional, and his parents may simply not be able, or willing, to take the risk of making him go to school.

Then there may be a compulsory supervision order issued by the social work department: Jimmy must go to school, at least to some extent, or you will be breaking the law. In practice, of course, prosecution is very, very rare, because Jimmy may reach 16; in any case, this really isn’t always something parents can manage.

All of this is, of course, about money. We desperately need much more investment in education welfare officers, and in mental health services. We need to ensure that schools can provide safe environments for vulnerable children, and that the education they have is flexible and, if necessary, tailored to their individual needs.

We need to be able to act much more quickly and avoid the cumbersome, and generally ineffective, processes outlined above. Of course, some kids are just truanting, with or without their parents’ consent, and we need to be able to work out who they are more quickly, if that’s possible. In short, we need to be tough, when necessary, on this dangerous epidemic of school non-attendance and tough on its causes, and we need a new approach soon. About one in 11 Scottish schoolchildren aren’t at school on any one school day – enough’s enough.

Cameron Wyllie writes a blog called A House in Joppa. His book, Is There A Pigeon in the Room? My Life in Schools, is published by Birlinn.

Scottish school attendance rates are now dangerously low. This cannot continue – Cameron Wyllie

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