Parents who are working at home during the pandemic are keeping their children at school with them, the chief inspector said Ofsted he suggested.
Sir Martyn Oliver, who introduced his first annual report on children’s education and social care of EnglandHe said the trend could be seen in the lower levels on Friday.
Staying at home at the end of the week seems to be part of a wider trend of “unusual training” since the pandemic, which includes part-time and hybrid learning.
Oliver’s report said education had become “broken and reduced for too many children” while student attendance remained a “persistent and damaging issue” after the Covid-19 lockdowns.
In an interview shortly before the report was published on Thursday, Oliver said parents working at home had contributed to the school’s absence.
“Pre-pandemic, we used to notice that teachers and teachers, if the parents were working at home, they would send their children to themselves,” said Hello Britain.
“But now post-pandemic” we also see parents working at home and sometimes keeping their children away from them. It is well known that on Fridays the attendance tends to drop more than on any other day.”
When asked about attendance, Oliver said pandemic lockdowns and the “phenomenon” of working at home have had an impact on pupil absences.
“We went into a period of lockdown where children were told not to go to school and actually told to go to their screens and use their mobile phones, and then suddenly we come back and when it comes back, it’s like “Now come off your screen’ – the thing we really just asked you to be on the best part of two years.”
The annual report echoes these concerns, saying that a growing number of children “whose form of education has been cut off” by the pandemic.
Flexi-schooling – where parents educate their children at home for part of the week – has been “on the rise” across England, Oliver said.
Students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and human life needs are also “increasingly” receiving a mix of online and in-person lessons, he said.
Ofsted’s annual report – which reflects on the state of education and social care of children in the last academic year – also estimated that 34,000 children are in part-time school, where students attend school for part of the week and spend the rest of the time. at home
A statement from the Department for Education (DfE) says part-time supervision should only be used in “very limited settings” and should not be used to manage a child’s behaviour.
“The publication of the seasons suggests that they are becoming easier to use, which may not be a good thing,” Oliver warned.
Along with the tens of thousands of children who were educated at home – and an unknown number who attended non-registration schools – was “a very significant number of children who, in one way or another, were recruited from the more orthodox models of education”.
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The Ofsted report highlighted that attendance issues had become “worse” since the pandemic, and children were left with more resources than ever before.
Nearly a fifth (19.2%) of pupils in England were “persistently absent” – missing at least 10% of school sessions – in the autumn and spring of the last academic year, government figures show.
This is higher than the pre-pandemic rate in the autumn and spring terms of 2018-19 (10.5%).
“Voting has taken place in dealing with pandemic lockdowns,” the report states. “The expectation of school attendance is now casually viewed. With working at home now established for many parents, old family routines have been loosened.
“Perhaps it is surprising that the rates are absent for Friday before other days of the week.”
Oliver received an Ofsted chief inspector in January when the police dog was criticized following the death of teacher Ruth Perry.
Perry killed himself after an Ofsted report demoted Caversham Primary School in Reading from the top to the bottom rating in care.
A coroner’s Ofsted inspection in November 2022 concluded that he had contributed to her death.