Schools in England send police to homes of absent pupils with threats to jail their parents

‘Heavy-handed’ crackdown ignores underlying reasons for failure to attend classes, say critics

Some schools in England are sending police to the homes of children who are persistently absent, or warning them their parents may go to prison if their attendance doesn’t improve, the Observer has learned.

Headteachers say they are now under intense pressure from the government to turn around the crisis in attendance, with a record 150,000 children at state schools classed as severely absent in 2022-23. From September, all state schools in England will have to share their attendance records every day with the Department for Education.