Government under pressure over ‘ghost children’ missing from class
The government “remains committed” to legislate to establish a register of pupils who are not in school, the education secretary said.
It comes after criticism that the King’s Speech on Tuesday, which set out the legislative agenda for the year, did not include anything about the plan to reduce the number of so-called “ghost children”.
As Sky News has reported, since the pandemic there has been a rise in the number youngsters who have stopped going to school.
Often this is pupils who have been excluded from the classroom and then fall out of the system – making them vulnerable to being targeted by gangs.
Making an intervention as Education Secretary Gillian Keegan opened a debate in the House of Commons, Lib Dem MP Munira Wilson said: “What was crystal clear from the King’s Speech yesterday is despite her [Ms Keegan’s] grandiose statements here, education is not a priority for this government.”
Ms Wilson asked why there was no announcement “about bringing forward legislation for a children-not-in-school register” – something ministers promised they would still do after scrapping the Schools Bill last year.
The education secretary said that remains the government’s position – though she did not say when the plans would be brought before parliament, only saying it would happen at a “suitable opportunity”.
“We do remain committed to legislating to take forward the children-not-in-school measures and we will progress these at a future suitable legislative opportunity,” Ms Keegan said.
“We are continuing to work with local authorities to improve the non-statutory registers. And we have also launched a consultation on revised elective home education guidance.
“So there is work going on, the consultation is open until January 18, 2024. So there is a lot of work going on and we do intend to bring forward that legislation.”
Read more:
Thousands are missing school
The ‘ghost children’ crisis explained
Absence in schools is now at crisis point
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Excluded teen stabbed in Croydon
The law requires all children of school age to receive suitable full-time education, but last year 141,000 children spent more time out of class than in – up by 137% since the pandemic.
Local councils blame funding problems for not being able to keep track of missing pupils well enough.
Last May the government launched a piece of legislation known as the Schools Bill, which promised to raise standards through a series of measures including the creation of local authority-administered register for children not in school.
However, come December it was scrapped, with ministers insisting they were committed to its objectives despite not taking the legislation further.
Speaking in the Commons, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson paid tribute to Sky News “for being relentless in pursuing this issue”.
She said persistent absenteeism means we are now on track for two million children to be regularly missing school by 2025.
She said: “That’s one in four of our children. There is no greater failing by this government than standing by as more and more children are missing from school for days on end, term after term, a lost generation of children missing from England’s schools.”
A broad and complex crisis damaging the lives of thousands
For months now I’ve been speaking to children, parents, teachers and experts all struggling with one major issue – children not going to school.
It’s a quiet, hidden crisis; the child too anxious to get out of the car, the parent spending hours on the phone fighting for a special school place. And all that time, learning is lost.
The latest data paints a really worrying picture, too. It shows that 140,000 children are missing 50% or more of their education – called severe absence.
And a staggering 1.5 million children are what’s called persistently absent – missing the equivalent of a morning a week. These figures are double what they were before the pandemic.
Back in July, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan accepted this is “crisis”. She said wished she could drive children to school herself, and even said it was the job of headteachers to do the same, if necessary.
Her department has introduced attendance hubs and mentors to tackle the problem in the worst affected areas.
But campaigners – including the children’s commissioner for England – have been calling for legislation in the King’s Speech to focus efforts to get children back to the classroom, to enshrine a solution into law. But nothing materialised.
Labour now appears to be seizing the opportunity.
It’s always been thought that education won’t be a big issue in the next election. That could be about to change with the party choosing to take valuable parliamentary debate time to raise the issue in the House.
There are lots of issues at play here; the cost of living crisis, NHS waiting lists for mental health services, school places and council funding.
It is a broad and hugely complex crisis that’s damaging the lives of thousands of children.
Ms Phillipson earlier told Sky News that if she becomes education secretary after the next election, she will “take action to make sure our children are supported, that every day in school matters”.
She said that would mean: “More mental health support, with mental health hubs in every community, improved access to mental health support within our secondary schools, and alongside that for our younger children, universal free breakfast clubs to support children with a softer start to the school day, and also wider help for families during what’s a really difficult time with the cost of living crisis.”
Meanwhile, Andy Cook, chief executive of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a centre-right think tank, warned the crisis could have far-reaching consequences for society.
He told Sky News: “You go into any prison and you talk to the people there, 90% of them say they missed a lot of school on a regular basis. So we need to take this seriously.”
Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty. And besides, the pig likes it.
Looking at the festive ding-dong that’s broken out between Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, you do wonder if the Tory leader should take on board this famous quote – because there was only ever going to be one winner from this spat.
The Reform UK leader has spent the thick end of three decades dragging his political opponents into fights that ultimately benefit his cause. This is no different.
What would have been a relatively low-key Christmas stunt has been elevated into literal front page news.
Reform UK insiders say that, in turn, is driving more people to the party and pushing up their member count further.
Nigel Farage has spent his career dragging opponents into fights. Pic: Reuters
Part of this is down to news editors grabbing on to any bit of politics that’s around during the quiet period between Christmas and New Year.
Why Badenoch and her team didn’t clock this and hold back will likely bewilder some in her party.
An argument the Tories should have swerved
What’s more, the Tory leader is also currently on the back foot regarding her central accusation that the Reform membership number is fake.
Reform agreed to show Sky News details of their account on NationBuilder – a platform that manages memberships and donations for many political parties.
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From September – Farage: I could become prime minister
The number of active memberships in the account portal matched the figure on the ticker – with their website count growing in size shortly after the NationBuilder tally increased.
Sky News also conducted its own analysis on the ticker and found nothing suspicious as it stands (read the full analysis here).
Kemi Badenoch has said Reform changed the coding when people began to point out the alleged discrepancy, but has yet to provide any evidence to back this up.
Either way, this is still an argument the Tories should probably have swerved.
All politicians need to pick their battles
Yes, signed-up members mean more income for a party, but they don’t necessarily translate into wider electoral success. After all, Labour’s membership surged under Jeremy Corbyn, but he still lost two elections.
But that’s not to say both main parties shouldn’t be looking very closely in their rearview mirror at Reform.
The party’s reaction to this row shows a far more professional behind-the-scenes operation than the previous, more ramshackle incarnations of the Farage-led political machine.
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Is Reform UK winning the ‘bro vote’?
Talk to long time allies of the Reform leader, and even they sound somewhat surprised by how slick their project has got.
They also point to electoral milestones on the horizon where the party’s results at the ballot box can be objectively tracked – beginning with May’s local elections next year and running through the Welsh Assembly vote in 2026.
There’ll be many more attempts by Nigel Farage to wrestle with his political opponents before then.
The task for the Tory and indeed Labour leaders is to pick their fights and judge how dirty they are prepared to get.
UK
Nigel Farage threatens legal action if Kemi Badenoch doesn’t apologise for saying membership ticker was ‘fake’
Nigel Farage has threatened to take legal action against Tory leader Kemi Badenoch if she does not apologise for accusing him of publishing a “fake” ticker showing Reform UK’s membership increasing to overtake the Conservatives.
The Reform UK leader has reacted furiously to Ms Badenoch’s assertion that he was “manipulating [his] own supporters” with a ticker that is “coded to tick up automatically” after it showed the insurgent right-wing party had gone past 131,680 members – the number of eligible Conservative Party members in its leadership election in the autumn.
He is demanding an apology from Ms Badenoch for the “accusations of fraud and dishonesty” that he labelled “disgraceful”, and said he is “not going to take it lying down”.
Asked by Sky News in a call with journalists if he is going to sue the Tory leader for libel, Mr Farage said: “I’m going to take some action in the next couple of days. I’ve got to decide exactly what it is, but I’m certainly not going to take it lying down.”
“I think it’s an absolutely outrageous thing for her to have said,” he continued. “I know she’s got a very bad temper. I know she’s well known for lashing out at people, but I am not at all happy, and I’m going to take some action.”
He added that he will confirm within two days exactly what this action will be if she does not apologise for the “intemperate outburst”.
Analysis: Badenoch needs to pick her battles
Reform showed Sky News the coding used to link the ticker to the member count within their account on the platform NationBuilder. The demonstration provided strong evidence that the ticker was not automated. Scroll down for the full analysis.
A Tory source told Sky News: “Fake Farage is clearly rattled that his Boxing Day Publicity Stunt is facing serious questions over a fake clock and hundreds of ‘members’ seemingly joining in the middle of the night.
“Like most normal people around the UK, Kemi is enjoying Christmas with her family and looking forward to taking on the challenges of renewing the Conservative Party in the New Year.”
‘It’s a fake’
The row started after Reform UK said on Boxing Day that it officially had more members than the Conservative Party, which Mr Farage, party leader and MP for Clacton-on-Sea, hailed as a “historic moment”, describing his party as “the real opposition”.
Reform UK also shared a video of the membership tracker being projected on to the Conservative Party headquarters in London.
But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused the party of issuing misleading figures: “Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?. It’s not real. It’s a fake… [the website has been] coded to tick up automatically.”
Posting on X, she added that the Tories had “gained thousands of new members since the leadership election”.
Reform UK hit back at Ms Badenoch, publishing a screenshot of an online register claiming to show “active memberships”.
Reform UK chair Zia Yusuf also waded into the row, claiming that people whose memberships of the Tory party had lapsed voted in the autumn leadership election that saw Ms Badenoch elected to the role.
In a call with journalists earlier, he repeated the assertion, and after putting out a call on social media for people to contact him if they had voted in the leadership election but are no longer party members, he said he has received “just so many” that he has not yet been able to verify their claims.
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Ms Badenoch and the Conservative Party have been contacted for comment.
Reform UK has said it will submit to an audit of its membership numbers by one of the “big four” accountancy firms if the Tories do the same.
Farage gets personal
Speaking to journalists earlier, Mr Farage was very critical of Ms Badenoch personally, saying her claim that their membership number ticker had been faked “reflects her personality”.
He labelled her “aggressive” and “liable to lashing out”, and said he thinks she wrote her tweet out of a “slight sense of anger”.
“She’s got to fully disprove this, and she’s going to find life a lot more difficult and bitterly regret putting this out on Boxing Day afternoon,” he added.
A man has been charged with four counts of attempted murder after a car collided with a group of people in London’s West End on Christmas Day.
Anthony Gilheaney, 30, will appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday and has also been charged with causing serious injury by driving whilst disqualified, driving a motor vehicle dangerously and possession of a bladed article in a public place, the Metropolitan Police said.
Forensic investigators collect evidence at the scene on Christmas Day. Pic: PA
Items of clothing and blood are seen on the pavement. Pic: PA
Four people were taken to hospital after the incident, with one in a life-threatening condition.
Metropolitan Police officers were called to reports of a crash and a car driving on the wrong side of the road at 12.45am.
The incident occurred outside the Sondheim Theatre, which is the London home of the musical Les Miserables.
Shaftesbury Avenue is at the heart of London‘s West End and the city’s theatre district.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy said the suspect was arrested within minutes of the incident “in the early hours of Christmas Day”.
“Since then, investigators have worked tirelessly to build the case and have today charged Anthony Gilheaney with four counts of attempted murder.
“Our thoughts now are with the victims, one of which remains in critical condition in hospital.”
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