News

New survey reveals one in three parents think children don’t need to go to school everyday

And the COVID-19 pandemic is the reason.

Emily Sergeant - 10th January 2024

A new survey has revealed that one in three UK parents don’t think it’s essential for children to go into school everyday.

The reason for this? Well, it’s apparently all due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a new YouGov public poll, which has been conducted by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) thinktank, around 28% of parents surveyed said they felt the several lockdowns throughout 2020 and 2021 proved that youngsters did not actually need to physically be in the classroom five days a week.

On top of this, apparently only 70% of parents are confident that their child’s needs are being met at school anyway, and this figure was even found to have dropped to 61% for children at secondary school.

The shocking results of the poll – which questioned 1,206 parents during December 2023, and is part of a wider report titled The Missing Link: Restoring The Bond Between Schools And Families – has led CSJ chief executive, Andy Cook, to claim there is “fundamental work” that needs to be done in order to “rebuild the contract between families and schools”.

He also added that it proves the “bonds of trust” between the two parties have been broken for a “significant minority”.

“This is not a one-way street,” Mr Cook continued.

“Parents have legitimate expectations of schools, which the Government must help them to deliver, but as parents, we need to take responsibility for getting our kids ready for school, at school, and for keeping them engaged in school.

“Restoring the bond between parents and schools will help us to do this [but] failure to address this will be catastrophic for the future of our people, communities, and state.”

The results of the survey come as the Government unveiled plans for a major national drive aiming to improve school attendance figures nationwide yesterday.

With tackling persistent pupil absence at the centre of the new “stronger” measures, the Government says more than one million children and young people across England will be supported into regular education thanks to the expansion of the already-existing ‘attendance hubs’.

The ‘attendance hubs’ work to provide “a range of tailored support” to families to boost time in school.

There’ll be 18 new attendance hubs across six regions, which will eventually bring the total to 32, and see nearly 2,000 schools helped to tackle regular absences.

“Tackling attendance is my number one priority,” commented Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan.

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“The benefits of our success in raising education standards can only be when all children are in school… [and] we want all our children to have the best start in life, because we know that attending school is vital to a child’s wellbeing, development, and attainment as well as impact future career success.”

Featured Image – gov.uk