Children Missing From Education

Children Missing from Education

A child going missing from school is a potential indicator of abuse and neglect. Staff will monitor children that go missing from school, particularly on repeat occasions, and report them to the designated safeguarding lead – following normal safeguarding procedures.

In order to ensure accurate data is collected to allow effective safeguarding, the school will inform the LA of any pupil who is going to be deleted from the admission register where they:

• Have been taken out of school by their parents and are being educated outside the school system, e.g. home education.
• Have ceased to attend school and no longer live within a reasonable distance of the school.
• Have been certified by the school medical officer as unlikely to be in a fit state of health to attend school before ceasing to be of compulsory school age, and neither he/she nor his/her parent has indicated the intention to continue to attend the school after ceasing to be of compulsory school age.
• Are in custody for a period of more than four months due to a final court order and we do not reasonably believe they will be returning to the school at the end of that period.
• Have been permanently excluded.

The local authority must be notified when a school is to delete a pupil from its register under the above circumstances. This should be done as soon as the grounds for deletion are met, but no later than deleting the pupil’s name from the register. It is essential that schools comply with this duty, so that local authorities can, as part of their duty to identify children of compulsory school age who are missing education, follow up with any child who might be in danger of not receiving an education and who might be at risk of abuse or neglect.