A think tank study has warned that a ‘tidal wave of youth crime’ will hit Britain if action isn’t taken to reverse a post-COVID surge in school absence.
The Centre for Social Justice has identified a generation of ‘ghost children’, those who are set to be persistently absent in their last year of school if present absence rates aren’t addressed.
This risks an additional 9,000 extra young offenders, including 2,000 more violent criminals, by 2027 if left unresolved, the think tank discovered.
They concentrated their study on students projected to leave school in Year 11 in 2025, a so-called ‘lost generation’ who started secondary school just as COVID lockdowns hit.
The CSJ, which was set up by ex-Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, warned of a £100 million a year cost to the taxpayer from soaring youth criminality related to school absence.
Their recent report said that rates of school absence have soared since the first COVID lockdown in 2020.
The number of persistently absent pupils, those missing more than 10 per cent of school time, increased to 32 per cent in 2022 among Year 11 pupils, up from 16 per cent just before the pandemic.
The number of persistently absent pupils increased by over 800,000 since 2019 to 1.7 million last autumn.
It’s also been shown that the number of severely absent pupils, those missing more than half of their school time, has more than doubled since 2019.
The CSJ analysis of Department for Education and Ministry of Justice research found persistently absent pupils are three times as likely to commit an offence by age 17 than pupils fully attending school.
The think tank is calling for ministers to ‘radically upscale’ their response to school absence, including a national rollout of ‘attendance mentors’ to tackle the underlying cause of absence.
Andy Cook, chief executive of the Centre for Social Justice, said that the Government needs to take absence seriously if they were to stop a lost generation of children suffering the consequence of lockdown for decades to come.
He said that alongside stunting academic attainment, children with a history of school absence were three times more likely to commit an offence than those who routinely attended school.
He added that for the sake of these children’s future, and for the safety of our streets, the government must stop tinkering around the edges and accelerate the national rollout of attendance mentors, ensuring all children benefit from an education that sets them up for life.
However, it would be a good idea if schools actually focused on teaching real-life skills.
Kids effectively missed a year and a half of school, and it’s been hard work ever since trying to get some of these kids back into school, and teachers striking hasn’t helped a great deal. Just one of the many reasons why the lockdown cure was more destructive than the disease.
But it’s not just COVID, the public school system is broken.
So many children leave primary school so full of hope and confidence for secondary school, only to have their spirits and identity destroyed by a system that only cares about the highest performing students and wants every child to be a robot.
It’s all ridiculous with their heavy-handed regulations and targets, with too much homework and very little support to learn, and it’s not surprising that so many kids don’t want to be there anymore. The system is broken and it’s heartbreaking.
Schooling now only recognises academic achievement and bombards kids with a daily practice of social conditioning that so many find unnatural, so you can appreciate why many see no real-life benefit to being there.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 