The leader of England’s third-largest multi-academy trust has urged “radical solutions” to address an “engagement crisis” that is leading young people to “vote with their feet” in not attending school.
Becks Boomer-Clark, CEO of Lift Schools, told the Lords Social Mobility Policy Committee today that it was “unhelpful” for the attendance crisis to be framed as such, arguing that “we have [an] engagement crisis”.
She said: “We’ve got a more discerning group of young people who are telling us, by voting with their feet, that what we’re offering many of them day-in-day-out in school, does not match their needs.
“It’s not relevant to where they are or what their future aspirations are, and it’s something we’ve really got to address, and I think probably with some quite radical solutions.”
To illustrate her point, Ms Boomer-Clark went so far as to challenge members of the Lords committee to shadow a child in an average school for a day while remaining “engaged and interested” by what is taught in Years 6-9.
Ms Boomer-Clark’s comments follow education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s speech to more than 200 education leaders in Birmingham yesterday in which she said that improving pupil attendance is a “generational challenge” and a “responsibility” that headteachers should try to “live up to”.
The latest government figures, published in March, revealed that the number of pupils classed as “severely absent” in England reached a record high last year.
‘Off the edge of a cliff’
Ms Boomer-Clark, whose trust runs 57 academies across England, said at the evidence session that her MAT recently introduced a survey to measure feelings of belonging and engagement, revealing a “cliff edge” post Year 6.
Ms Boomer-Clark said that 84 per cent of the trust’s Year 6 children reported a “positive sense of belonging and engagement with school” but that afterwards it “just falls off the edge of a cliff”.
For Years 8 and 9, the positive sentiment dropped to 59 and 58 per cent, respectively.
For Year 11 - “when it gets serious”, because children “suddenly realise” why they probably need to be at school - Ms Boomer-Clark said the engagement and belonging levels recover to only 65 per cent.
Radical solutions?
She questioned what was happening to those students after Year 6, adding: “We have got a real challenge to do something quite radical with that key stage 3 period, because it’s not working…for a significant proportion [of children].”
Asked what “radical solutions” she would propose to this crisis, she told the committee that pupils are saying the national curriculum “status quo isn’t fit for purpose”.
She explained that children are much more digitally enabled than their teachers and have a “much greater awareness of what the world’s probably going to look like that they’re moving into.”
She also noted that, while young people are very engaged politically, there is often a “nervousness” to engage young people with contemporary issues in the classroom such as climate change and sustainability.
Tracking Neet indicators
The committee, chaired by Baroness Manningham-Buller, a former director-general of MI5, also heard that Lift Schools began tracking indicators that can be predictors of Neet status (not in education, employment or training) last year.
Ms Boomer-Clark said that of the MAT’s Year 11 students who left school in 2024, the attendance of those who went onto education, employment or training was 89.5 per cent.
This compared with just 48.6 per cent attendance for those who went on to be Neet, meaning those individuals lost 74 days or almost 15 weeks of their final year in formal schooling.
She added that the issue of engagement and Neet status isn’t “just about careers”. Rather, she argued that it is about identifying interests and tailoring opportunities for exposure “before school becomes completely irrelevant” to pupils.
Alongside Ms Boomer-Clark at the policy evidence session were Cygnus Academies Trust chief executive Danielle Lewis-Egonu and Emma Meredith, director of skills policy and global engagement at the Association of Colleges.
