‘The system just doesn’t work’: More children than ever are not in school, report finds, with more than 11 million lost days
A new report has found more children than ever are not in school, with the number of lost days of learning up nearly 70% in five years.
It is the most vulnerable children who skip school, are excluded, or simply disappear from education.
The analysis found that children lost 6.8 million days of learning in the autumn term before the COVID pandemic (2019/20) due to suspensions and absences, but the figure was 11.5 million days in the same period in 2023/24.
The report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and education charity The Difference also found for every child that is permanently excluded, 10 other children experience an “invisible” move that is not recorded in national data or overseen by local authorities or trusts.
A report has found more children than ever are not in school – with ‘invisible’ moves not recorded in national data
This includes “managed moves” – which are informal agreements between schools – as well as the illegal practice of off-rolling.
The report says: “One-third of children who experience one of these hidden moves goes to an unknown destination – meaning the Department for Education has no idea where or whether they are still being schooled.”
Sky News spoke to Gary Johns, from east London, who left school at the age of 14 and never went back. He decided to walk out after spending days in “isolation” being punished for bad behaviour.
Gary Johns left school aged 14 after spending days in ‘isolation’ being punished for bad behaviour.
He said: “It was like a caravan in the school grounds. You stay there all day long and they bring your lunch and food to you.
“You are not allowed to move from the desk unless you want to go to the toilet, where you can only go to the toilet from break and lunch – other than that you are there the whole day.”
Gary was out of education for a year and says he was not offered alternative options for education.
A mentor from the charity CAPE eventually got through to him by knocking on his door every day and urging him to go to the gym to build his confidence. Now aged 17, he is taking a carpentry course.
Now 17, Gary said he was never offered alternate education – is he’s now taking a carpentry course
Hussein Hussein from CAPE Mentors said many schools try to avoid taking on children who have been excluded from somewhere else.
He said: “The system just doesn’t work at the moment. We are in England, we should be saying ‘kids go to school.’ But the reality is ‘oh no they’ve been out so long we’ve got our GCSE results that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.’
“And the schools are smart, they are not going to say that. Instead, it’s ‘we don’t think it’s in the kid’s best interest’ – which is a load of nonsense. It is in every kid’s interest to be in school.”
‘The system just doesn’t work at the moment,’ Hussein Hussein says
Taejon Joseph-Andrews, 15-years-old, is in a pupil referral unit called the Haringey Learning Partnership.
In the space of two years, he was excluded from one school and managed out of three others.
He says his behaviour was triggered by grief which the schools failed to understand.
Taejon says ‘they were just looking at my record and judging me… I don’t think that’s fair’
He said: “They were just looking at my record and judging me based on my record and I don’t think that’s fair, especially when you don’t know what that child’s been through.
“I lost my nan – that was hard for me. I was staying with her as well, and she’d always been there for me.
“Losing someone as important as that – it just drove me crazy.”
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Where are excluded students now?
Taejon says at a time when he was having to feed and clothe himself, he was ‘on trial’ at various schools and being set targets he could not achieve.
But he believes with the help of the Haringey Learning Partnership he will be able to get back into mainstream education by year 11 and take his GCSEs.
Taejon Joseph-Andrews, 15, was excluded from one school and managed out of three others in just two years
The report calls on the government to introduce legislation to monitor whenever a child is moved out of their school, “to make sure we know where – and whether – our most vulnerable children are being educated.”
It also wants to improve the admissions practices of schools to ensure they do not avoid taking in disadvantaged children.
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It suggests that an investment of £850m for inclusion would support half a million children, reduce lost learning and ultimately pay for itself.
Kiran Gill told Sky News ‘for every permanently excluded child, we’ve got 10 more who are invisibly moving around the system’
Kiran Gill from The Difference told Sky News: “For every permanently excluded child we know they are going to cost the state at least £170,000 because they are going to struggle to access work, we will lose tax receipts, we are going to have higher benefits expenditure.
“But that’s just the kids we know about. For every permanently excluded child, we’ve got 10 more who are invisibly moving around the system.”
A council has won its bid to temporarily block asylum seekers from being housed at a hotel in Essex.
Epping Forest District Council sought an interim injunction to stop migrants from being accommodated at the Bell Hotel in Epping, which is owned by Somani Hotels Limited.
A government attempt to delay the application was rejected by the High Court judge earlier on Tuesday.
The interim injunction now means the hotel has to be cleared of its occupants within 14 days.
Somani Hotels said it intended to appeal the decision.
Several protests have been held outside the hotel in recent weeks after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, was charged with trying to kiss a teenage girl and denies the allegations. He is due to stand trial later this month.
Police officers ahead of a demonstration outside The Bell Hotel in July. Pic: PA
At a hearing last week, barristers for the council claimed Somani Hotels breached planning rules because the site is not being used for its intended purpose as a hotel.
Philip Coppel KC, for the council, said the problem was “getting out of hand” and “causing great anxiety” to local people.
He said the hotel “is no more a hotel [to asylum seekers] than a borstal to a young offender”.
File pic: PA
Piers Riley-Smith, for Somani Hotels Limited, said a “draconian” injunction would cause “hardship” for those in the hotel, arguing “political views” were not grounds for an injunction to be granted.
He also said contracts to house asylum seekers were a “financial lifeline” for the hotel, which was only 1% full in August 2022, when it was open to paying customers.
Protesters and counter-demonstrators outside The Bell Hotel in July. Pic: PA
The hotel housed migrants from May 2020 to March 2021, then from October 2022 to April 2024, with the council never instigating any formal enforcement proceedings against this use, Mr Riley-Smith said.
They were being placed there again in April 2025 and Mr Riley-Smith said a planning application was not made “having taken advice from the Home Office”.
At the end of the hearing last week, Mr Justice Eyre ordered that Somani Hotels could not “accept any new applications” from asylum seekers to stay at the site until he had made his ruling on the temporary injunction.
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TikTok and Instagram have been accused of targeting teenagers with suicide and self-harm content – at a higher rate than two years ago.
The Molly Rose Foundation – set up by Ian Russell after his 14-year-old daughter took her own life after viewing harmful content on social media – commissioned analysis of hundreds of posts on the platforms, using accounts of a 15-year-old girl based in the UK.
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The charity claimed videos recommended by algorithms on the For You pages continued to feature a “tsunami” of clips containing “suicide, self-harm and intense depression” to under-16s who have previously engaged with similar material.
One in 10 of the harmful posts had been liked at least a million times. The average number of likes was 226,000, the researchers said.
Mr Russell told Sky News the results were “horrifying” and showed online safety laws are not fit for purpose.
Molly Russell died in 2017. Pic: Molly Rose Foundation
‘This is happening on PM’s watch’
He said: “It is staggering that eight years after Molly’s death, incredibly harmful suicide, self-harm, and depression content like she saw is still pervasive across social media.
“Ofcom’s recent child safety codes do not match the sheer scale of harm being suggested to vulnerable users and ultimately do little to prevent more deaths like Molly’s.
“The situation has got worse rather than better, despite the actions of governments and regulators and people like me. The report shows that if you strayed into the rabbit hole of harmful suicide self-injury content, it’s almost inescapable.
“For over a year, this entirely preventable harm has been happening on the prime minister’s watch and where Ofcom have been timid it is time for him to be strong and bring forward strengthened, life-saving legislation without delay.”
Ian Russell says children are viewing ‘industrial levels’ of self-harm content
After Molly’s death in 2017, a coroner ruled she had been suffering from depression, and the material she had viewed online contributed to her death “in a more than minimal way”.
Researchers at Bright Data looked at 300 Instagram Reels and 242 TikToks to determine if they “promoted and glorified suicide and self-harm”, referenced ideation or methods, or “themes of intense hopelessness, misery, and despair”.
They were gathered between November 2024 and March 2025, before new children’s codes for tech companies under the Online Safety Act came into force in July.
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What are the new online rules?
The Molly Rose Foundation claimed Instagram “continues to algorithmically recommend appallingly high volumes of harmful material”.
The researchers said 97% of the videos recommended on Instagram Reels for the account of a teenage girl, who had previously looked at this content, were judged to be harmful.
Some 44% actively referenced suicide and self-harm, they said. They also claimed harmful content was sent in emails containing recommended content for users.
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, said: “We disagree with the assertions of this report and the limited methodology behind it.
“Tens of millions of teens are now in Instagram Teen Accounts, which offer built-in protections that limit who can contact them, the content they see, and the time they spend on Instagram.
“We continue to use automated technology to remove content encouraging suicide and self-injury, with 99% proactively actioned before being reported to us. We developed Teen Accounts to help protect teens online and continue to work tirelessly to do just that.”
TikTok
TikTok was accused of recommending “an almost uninterrupted supply of harmful material”, with 96% of the videos judged to be harmful, the report said.
Over half (55%) of the For You posts were found to be suicide and self-harm related; a single search yielding posts promoting suicide behaviours, dangerous stunts and challenges, it was claimed.
The number of problematic hashtags had increased since 2023; with many shared on highly-followed accounts which compiled ‘playlists’ of harmful content, the report alleged.
A TikTok spokesperson said: “Teen accounts on TikTok have 50+ features and settings designed to help them safely express themselves, discover and learn, and parents can further customise 20+ content and privacy settings through Family Pairing.
“With over 99% of violative content proactively removed by TikTok, the findings don’t reflect the real experience of people on our platform which the report admits.”
According to TikTok, they not do not allow content showing or promoting suicide and self-harm, and say that banned hashtags lead users to support helplines.
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Why do people want to repeal the Online Safety Act?
‘A brutal reality’
Both platforms allow young users to provide negative feedback on harmful content recommended to them. But the researchers found they can also provide positive feedback on this content and be sent it for the next 30 days.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: “These figures show a brutal reality – for far too long, tech companies have stood by as the internet fed vile content to children, devastating young lives and even tearing some families to pieces.
“But companies can no longer pretend not to see. The Online Safety Act, which came into effect earlier this year, requires platforms to protect all users from illegal content and children from the most harmful content, like promoting or encouraging suicide and self-harm. 45 sites are already under investigation.”
An Ofcom spokesperson said: “Since this research was carried out, our new measures to protect children online have come into force.
“These will make a meaningful difference to children – helping to prevent exposure to the most harmful content, including suicide and self-harm material. And for the first time, services will be required by law to tame toxic algorithms.
“Tech firms that don’t comply with the protection measures set out in our codes can expect enforcement action.”
Peter Kyle has said opponents of the Online Safety Act are on the side of predators. Pic: PA
‘A snapshot of rock bottom’
A separate report out today from the Children’s Commissioner found the proportion of children who have seen pornography online has risen in the past two years – also driven by algorithms.
Rachel de Souza described the content young people are seeing as “violent, extreme and degrading”, and often illegal, and said her office’s findings must be seen as a “snapshot of what rock bottom looks like”.
More than half (58%) of respondents to the survey said that, as children, they had seen pornography involving strangulation, while 44% reported seeing a depiction of rape – specifically someone who was asleep.
The survey of 1,020 people aged between 16 and 21 found that they were on average aged 13 when they first saw pornography. More than a quarter (27%) said they were 11, and some reported being six or younger.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
There is one thing scarier than markets lurching around. And that’s markets lurching around without a very compelling explanation.
Just yesterday, the yield on the government’s 30-year bonds – the best measure out there of the UK government’s long-term cost of borrowing – closed at the highest level since 1998, not long after Oasis released the album Be Here Now. Indeed, the yields on pretty much all UK government debt has been creeping up in recent weeks, though not all are back to Britpop era levels.
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In some senses, this looks very odd indeed. After all, the Bank of England just cut interest rates. In normal circumstances, you would expect measures of borrowing costs to be falling across the board. But clearly these are not normal times.
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‘Is the Bank worried about recession risk?’
All of which raises the question: is this a UK-specific phenomenon? Are markets singling out Britain for particular concern, much as they did after Liz Truss’s notorious mini-budget? Actually, there are more questions on top of that one. For instance, is this all about Rachel Reeves’s recent woes, and her need to find another £20bn, give or take, to make her sums add up? Are investors fretting about the Bank of England’s inflation-fighting credibility, given its cutting rates even as prices rise?
The short answer, I’m afraid, is that no one really knows. But a glance at a few metrics can at least provide a bit of context.
The first thing to note is that while government borrowing costs in the UK are up, they have also been rising in other leading economies. The UK, it’s worth saying, is a bit of an outlier with higher yields than in fellow G7 nations. But that’s not exactly a new thing: it’s been the case since the mini-budget. But the UK is a particularly ugly duckling in a lake full of them.
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Are taxes going to rise?
Indeed, look at other nations, and you see that Britain’s budgetary challenges are hardly unique. The US and France have ballooning budget deficits which are rising rapidly. Most European nations have pledged enormous increases in military spending to satisfy Donald Trump’s demands of NATO.
And over the Atlantic, the US administration has just committed to a sweeping set of generous fiscal measures, under its One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Even Elon Musk has voiced concerns about what this means for the deficit (which is set to continue rising ad infinitum, at least on paper).
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All of which brings us to the broader, possibly scarier, lesson. There are signs afoot that while G7 nations could depend for decades on other surplus countries – most notably China and other Asian countries – buying vast amounts of their debt in recent years, that might no longer be the case. In short, even as rich countries borrow like crazy, it’s becoming less clear who will lend them the money.
That’s an enormous conundrum, and not good news for anyone.
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