School leaders have long been haunted by those names on the register that never seem to materialise in the classroom. These students are classified as children missing education (CME) and their numbers are rising.

Ofsted’s latest annual report, released last month, reveals that 19 per cent more children are missing education compared with last year.

For years, the dialogue around these students has been reduced to a matter of data compliance and attendance percentages. However, a much-needed shift is now happening: the conversation is moving away from simple metrics and towards a deeper understanding of vulnerability and systemic belonging.

This shift is not about satisfying external inspectors, but about a profound re-evaluation of how individual institutions and the wider system cater for our most vulnerable learners. At the heart of this scrutiny is the CME concept itself. It’s a term that is often misunderstood, frequently over-simplified, and it represents a problem that is increasingly difficult to solve.

What do we mean by ‘missing’?

To understand why the system is struggling, we must first unpick what “missing education” actually means. In a legal sense, the definition is relatively narrow. A child missing education is defined as a child of compulsory school age who is not on a school roll and is not receiving a suitable education elsewhere, for example via elective home education.

The CME process is a bureaucratic safety net designed to catch children who have fallen out of the system entirely. This includes families who move without a forwarding address, children whose school applications are stuck in administrative limbo, or those who have disappeared into the cracks after leaving a school roll.

However, the current definition is increasingly viewed as a blunt instrument. It does not account for the “invisible” missing, including:

• Persistent and severe absentees who are technically on a school roll but attend so infrequently that their education is effectively non-existent.
• Children whose parents have opted for home education as a last resort (because the school system failed to meet their needs), yet who may not be receiving a broad or balanced curriculum at home.
• Students who are on a roll but are placed in off-site provisions, where that provision is part-time or offers a depleted curriculum.

These children may physically be “in education”, but they are nonetheless missing out on the learning they are entitled to.

Why the CME process fails

If we have a process for CME, why is the number of vulnerable children out of school still rising? The reality is that the CME process is a reactive mechanism in a proactive world.

First, there is administrative lag. The process relies on local authorities being notified when a child leaves a roll. In a fractured system of different school types, communication often breaks down.

Second, there is the threshold of suitability. Local authorities have a duty to ensure that children receive a suitable education, but the legal bar for what constitutes suitability is notoriously low and difficult to enforce.

Furthermore, there is the resource gap. The teams responsible for tracking CME are frequently underfunded and overstretched. They are trying to find children in a system that lacks a centralised, real-time national database. The process fails as a catch-all because it treats the symptom rather than the cause. It looks for the child once they are gone rather than addressing the reasons why they could not stay.

All of this is compounded by a number of wider systemic failures, including the lack of mental health support, the rigid nature of the modern curriculum, and the ongoing funding crisis in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

So what can schools do about this? Many of the issues outlined above are beyond schools’ power to fix. But there are steps that leaders can take to lessen the negative effects. It starts with moving beyond data and bureaucracy, and strengthening the integrity of inclusion.

Reframe absence as a narrative

Look at inclusion data with granular detail, weaving the raw numbers with the individual stories of children struggling to engage. Make this a regular activity with your senior team and scrutinise cases before they become CME.

The idea here is to reframe absence as a narrative. View every absence as a story of a child whom the system is failing to hold, rather than just a metric. Get to know the child and their family, dig deep and then share what you find.

Audit for ‘sharp edges’

Recognise that the school system, as it is currently built, has edges that are too sharp for some children to navigate. Work to identify and soften these edges. For example, sensory experiences relating to uniform may be making certain students uncomfortable. What allowances can be made for them

Remember that a child missing from the register is often a symptom of a school environment that they can no longer access; focus on making the environment accessible rather than just chasing shadows on the register. This is where you can spot commonalities for absence in subgroups within your bigger categories - like SEND - which are too broad.

Prioritise ‘felt’ inclusion

Move beyond just meeting safeguarding duties and ask how inclusion is actually felt in the corridors and playgrounds. Make student voice a regular and detailed process, not just a tick-box exercise or one-off survey.

Until we recognise that missing education is a failure of belonging as much as a failure of bureaucracy, we will continue to face this crisis. We must look at the human cost of an education system that has made schools, for too many, impossible to attend.

Hannah Carter is headteacher at Orchards Academy in Kent

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