A new RCPCH position statement highlights significant levels of persistent school absence (missing 10% or more of classes) across all four UK nations. Paediatricians are increasingly concerned about the impact on children’s development.
Education plays a crucial role in children’s lives, offering social and emotional development, nutritious meals, physical activity and wider opportunities. Schools are also vital settings for identifying vulnerable children and providing health surveillance, vaccinations and support. Research clearly shows that regular attendance benefits children’s physical and emotional wellbeing, future employability and long‑term participation in society, while absence is linked to poorer attainment and poorer employment prospects.
The reasons behind persistent absence are complex and varied and can often be outside a family’s control. They can include unmet emotional, mental or physical health needs, as well as wider social factors such as family crises or the impact of poverty.
RCPCH believes that supporting children to get the best out of life is everyone’s responsibility. With an expert voice, paediatricians can support children, young people and families by identifying barriers to attendance, advocating for specific support or arrangements, and working with schools to ensure a child can reach their full potential. The College’s recommendations for paediatricians include:
- Smart scheduling: Missing school is sometimes unavoidable, but before scheduling appointments, consider if this will impact a child’s school attendance and if this could be avoided.
- Use attendance as a wellbeing indicator: Paediatricians should help their patients set their own attendance target, support them to achieve this and use attendance as a wellbeing indicator on consecutive appointments, when appropriate.
- Advocate for change: There are factors that can be addressed by paediatricians on an individual level, but others require local influencing or whole system change. As a trusted voice paediatricians can play a vital role in advocating for change.
Alongside these recommendations, RCPCH is urging governments and education leaders across all four nations to adopt a support‑first approach to school attendance, ensuring every child feels safe, confident and able to learn. We are calling for improved national data on health‑related absences, action to tackle the wider causes of persistent absence and stronger collaboration between health and education.
RCPCH recognises the Department for Education’s Schools White Paper and its aim to improve attendance including, for example, by reducing the impact of ill-health and medical appointments on attendance. The College is engaging government officials as part of its work on school attendance.
RCPCH Vice President for Policy, Dr Mike McKean, said:
It's impossible to overstate the importance of education in a child's life. As a paediatrician I have seen first-hand the link between poor health and poor school attendance, and how damaging persistent and long-term absences from school can be on a child and their family. Worryingly, since the COVID-19 pandemic, significant numbers of children and young people have been reported as regularly missing school across the UK. That’s why we’re calling for governments and education providers to take greater action to tackle the barriers to attendance.
Families are facing pressures that make attendance harder, from unmet health needs to poverty and wider social challenges. The recommendations published are designed to help paediatricians work alongside families and schools to help remove and reduce barriers and protect every child’s right to a full education. Only by co‑designing solutions with schools, clinicians and local authorities can we ensure children’s health, wellbeing and right to education are truly upheld.