By James Simons-
Over 33,000 children are missing from the radar of the education system, according to the national child bureau who conducted a qualitative research on missing children.
A BBC freedom of information request last year revealed that over 14,000 children in the UK had disappeared from the radar- a number that has more than doubled since then to 33,000.
Special education needs , domestic violence at home, and bullying are among the reasons cited for children who disappear from schiol . The national child bureau have expressed concerns that more needs to be done to buck the unfortunate trend that is failing thousands of children in the UK.
Charlotte Bradford from the national child bureau told the eye of media.com :
” some children do not attend school because their parents have been changing homes due to experiences of domestic violence .Some children are home educated and in that respect are having an education , as they don’t necessarily have to be in school if they are being educated “.
In some other cases children have said they were not in school because of bullying. Every borough has an education missing officer who will try and track the children down. Information sharing helps achieve this but it can be quite tricky because of data protection laws, because we are talking about children here”.
BULLYING
Bullying has always been a problem in schools, but this factor alone does not account for the reason children disappear from school. Special education needs and domestic violence go a fair way to explain the broad skipping of lessons by children who are supposed to be under the care of their parents.
Teachers have an attendance register , and should therefore be able to monitor the attendance of children. Domestic violence at home is a regular problem many families that call for the necessary involvement of the police and social services.
ABSENCE
Continuous absence of so many thousands of children from school is a disgrace to the system , and should be effectively addressed sooner rather than later. The failure to address this highlights an appalling weakness and absence of effective policies at both a governmental level and institutional level.
Special skills and more effective teaching methods should be adopted to tackle special education needs.The number of children missing from schools us too high and something urgently needs to be do e to tackle it now.