Attendance has been the defining crisis facing schools since the Covid-19 pandemic.

It has been identified as a priority by the current and former governments, and will be one of the areas against which Ofsted inspects schools in its new framework.

After years of concerning headlines about high and rising levels of pupil absence, recent figures suggest the tide may be turning and that school attendance is beginning to edge upwards.

But leaders are warning that getting pupils through the gate is actually only part of the challenge and that official figures mask another very serious problem: internal truancy.

This is when a student arrives in school for the day but is then not found at their lessons.

Experts tell Tes this issue is posing huge safeguarding risks and adding to workload burdens for schools.

And there are warnings for government that turning this around is about to become significantly more difficult amid a national focus on making mainstream schools more inclusive by catering for more pupils with additional needs.

Perhaps the most worrying thing, according to leaders, is that we cannot quantify the problem.

Internal truancy isn’t being measured

This is despite widespread recognition within the profession that it needs to be addressed: polling of more than 6,000 teachers earlier this year found that almost half of secondary teachers thought that internal truancy was a bigger issue than external truancy.

And Tom Bennett, the government’s behaviour and attendance ambassador, describes it as one of the “top 10 issues that schools face” and an “enormous safeguarding concern”.

“Internal truancy is a perennial issue in some schools…the problem is that it has become normalised in some schools,” he tells Tes.

However, Julie McCulloch, policy director at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), told MPs that internal truancy is not captured across the country.

“We don’t have enough data on a national level to understand the extent of the issue,” Ms McCulloch told the education select committee in July.

This concern is echoed by Cristin O’Brien, senior policy advisor at education charity The Difference.

“There is no consistency across schools in having to measure it,” O’Brien says, adding that schools should instead be “incentivised” to track it.

She warns that internal truancy “often escalates if the reasons for the truancy are not investigated”.

While some schools record internal truancy, O’Brien says, the DfE needs to “look at scaling that practice nationally and give guidance to schools on how to do it”.

Attendance codes ‘mask’ the problem

Jonny Uttley, who runs The Education Alliance multi-academy trust in Hull and the East Riding, says: “We do not have eyes on [internal truancy] nationally at all. The data system is not fit for purpose.

He adds: “At the moment, there is not an attendance code that specifically covers it.”

The DfE gets attendance data for the morning and afternoon, so if a pupil attends lessons at the start and then leaves lessons later on, the data will record them as being present.

“It is a problem because the scale of the issue could be masked by this,” he warns, calling for the DfE to have ” live real-time data about who is in every school and to look at how this could then be used to provide a way of monitoring internal truancy”.

Bennett: bigger role for Ofsted

Bennett suggests Ofsted inspectors could look at the type of data a school holds on internal truancy “to understand if they are in charge of it”.

He suggests that Ofsted could triangulate daily registers with those who are repeatedly internally truant to see if they are physically present.

Inspectors could also challenge students out of lessons to see if they have a legitimate reason for being out, Bennett adds.

Ofsted told Tes that its inspectors will want to understand how leaders are monitoring any internal truancy, which may include internal data if the school has it.

However, it added that this would not be something it asks for or expects a school to collect.

Students playing ‘hide-and-seek’ with senior leaders

Manny Botwe, outgoing president of ASCL, warns that many headteachers have reported a rise in internal truancy to the union following the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s a huge issue. The implications are massive, if you think of safeguarding,” says Botwe, who is headteacher of Tytherington School in Macclesfield.

“You want to make the distinction between punctuality issues and those students who come into school but decide not to go to lessons for significant parts of the day.”

Internal truancy can range from missing half a lesson per day to missing two or three lessons per day, Botwe says. It can also include those students who leave the lesson partway through and do not return.

“If we’re talking about raising outcomes for students, any time that is spent out of lesson - whether that is wandering the corridors or playing hide-and-seek with senior leaders - is going to have an impact on outcomes for younger people.”

Staff check stairwells and CCTV to catch truants

Jo Rowley, the deputy headteacher at Walton High School, Stafford, describes monitoring internal truancy as an “ongoing battle”.

Staff at her school check CCTV footage and look in stairwells and in between school buildings daily to catch those students missing lessons.

Rowley’s school, which is in the top quarter of schools in the country for overall attendance, still has around 50 out of 1400 students who go missing from lessons each week.

“Pre-pandemic, we would rarely see children walking around the corridor out of lessons. There has been a change of culture,” Rowley warns.

Who are the internal truants?

The fractured relationship between schools and parents has become a central issue in education since the pandemic, and this tension is partially reflected in stubborn attendance issues, say experts.

Botwe observes that students who miss lessons often have parents who do not have a positive relationship with the school.

“Unless you make it clear that everybody’s working in partnership on this issue - parents, staff and the young people themselves - it can have a really corrosive effect on the student experience,” Botwe warns.

“This issue of internal truancy is one that the government should be picking up as a priority. It not only tells us about students who are not in lessons, but also where we need to have tough conversations with students and parents.”

Research has also found connections between students who experience mental-health challenges and those with lower attendance rates.

And Rowley says she has also seen a “definite increase” in truancy among students with mental-health issues and those waiting for an education health and care plan.

DfE inclusion efforts pose ‘massive risk’ to internal truancy

The current government inherited a crisis over the education of children with special educational needs. And it has made clear that a key part of its solution will be ensuring mainstream schools are more inclusive for these pupils.

However, there are concerns that, without additional resourcing, internal truancy could rise if schools are accommodating more children with additional needs, who may find it more challenging to access the curriculum.

“The reality is [the government’s inclusion drive] could exacerbate the challenges we are already seeing in schools if enhanced provision is not carefully scaffolded and resourced,” says Margaret Mullholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at ASCL.

“Schools are already employing staggered starts, options to leave five minutes before lessons finish, and various other flexible strategies, and they maintain consistent ambition to bring children back into class,” she adds.

There is a “massive risk” that the government’s inclusion drive could mean that there will be more children who will find it harder to access the curriculum, “if the required changes in the school environment, inclusive design of the curriculum and the need for specialist support aren’t appropriately funded”, she warns.

How internal truancy ‘consumes’ staff time

Botwe says that the time and energy teachers and school leaders expend on tackling internal truancy is significant.

“What internal truancy means in practical terms is that we’re spending more of our resources on patrols and calls, and less time teaching and supporting young people,” he warns.

Rowley agrees. “It’s a three-hour job for three staff to monitor attendance. It consumes so much of staff time - we have to be in constant contact with each other.”

Darren Northcott, NASUWT national official for education, says internal truancy is a concern among the teaching union’s members. “They report that, in some situations, these pupils are causing disruption to other students who are in class trying to learn and, in some cases, are engaging in poor and sometimes violent behaviour,” he adds.

While Northcott welcomes the government’s focus on absence, he says that internal truancy is “damaging pupils’ life chances and diverting teachers’ time from teaching”. He believes a greater focus is needed from government on supporting schools to deal with it.

Solutions

So how are schools tackling it?

At Rowley’s school in Stafford, they have invested in pastoral support, which involves a staff member assigned to work with students who have been known to be internally truant in the past.

“However, everything comes with a cost,” Rowley adds.

Botwe’s school runs an on-call system: if a student does not show up to lesson, the teacher will alert the duty member of staff to search for the student.

His school is also introducing phone pouches, where students’ phones are put away for the day.

He says this is “not just because phones are distractions, but as they are a means by which students can communicate with each other to get out of lessons and meet in particular areas of school”.

It is an approach that has also proven successful in Uttley’s 12 schools. The chief executive said that, after banning phones, the trust has seen a “significant decline” in the amount of internal truancy.

The issue also exists outside mainstream schools.

Jeremy Dodd, headteacher at The Avenue Centre pupil referral unit in Bedfordshire, uses workslips, which measure when a student either doesn’t attend a lesson or fails to complete enough work for it to count as meaningful engagement.

“Pupils are then given the opportunity to complete [the work] at break, lunchtime or in detention at the end of the day,” he explains.

“In term one, we recorded 50. In term two, that rose to 178 as staff applied expectations consistently. By term three, the figure had dropped dramatically to 24, showing that pupils are learning to stay in lessons and engage with their work,” Dodd says.

The DfE has been approached for a comment.