More than 120,000 secondary students are at risk of never returning to full-time education and becoming easy prey for criminal gangs, the children’s commissioner has warned.

New analysis published today reveals the heightened impact that lockdown and school closures will have on the 123,000 vulnerable teenagers who were already falling through the gaps in the school and social care system.

Anne Longfield, children’s commissioner for England, said: “Even before the lockdown, one in 25 teenagers in England were falling through gaps in the school or social services systems.

“This summer I am particularly worried that teenagers who have finished Year 11, who have seen their apprenticeship collapse or have simply lost their way through lockdown will simply fall off the radar. Teenagers in colleges have so far been left out of catch-up funding.”

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She added: “Many of these children, and I fear many thousands of other vulnerable teenagers, have had very little structure to their lives over the last six months. School was often a stretch for them, and I am concerned we are never going to get some of them back into education.

“If we do not act now, this could result in a lost generation of teens - dropping out of school, going under the radar, getting into trouble, and at risk of being groomed by gangs and criminals.”

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Her report calls on councils to urgently work with schools, police and youth workers to focus resources on teenagers “at risk of becoming ‘invisible’ to services, or who have gone missing under lockdown”.

Teachers and school leaders have already warned that lockdown and school closures will disproportionately affect disadvantaged students, as highlighted in the Tes series “Closing the Covid Gap”.

The commissioner’s report says that summer schemes, such as youth and sports clubs, should be made available for children to engage in, and calls on the government to advise schools to support these schemes from within their additional £650 million “catch-up” funding.

It also states that it is crucial that the government, schools, local authorities, police forces and safeguarding partnerships work together to identify, support and re-engage these children.

The report analyses data on the 13- to 17-year-olds who were on the radar of schools and children’s social care in 2017-18. It finds that 81,000 teenagers were not receiving the support they needed, according to a list of criteria - for example, having a permanent exclusion but not entering a pupil-referral unit, dropping out of school in Year 11 or having a Child In Need referral but no CIN plan. A total of 13,000 of these met more than one of these criteria.

The analysis also includes 42,000 young people who were not in education, employment or training, to reach the 123,000 figure.

The report says: “These are not estimates but real teenagers, identified by combining datasets from education and children’s social care and seeing where children go ‘missing’ between them.”

The national proportion of students falling through the gaps was 4 per cent, but it was higher in Liverpool, Medway and Blackpool (7 per cent) and lower in Wokingham, Barnet, Kingston upon Thames, Westminster, Harrow, Richmond upon Thames, West Berkshire and Rutland (around 2.5 per cent).

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Schools and colleges are acutely conscious of the risk that some pupils are vulnerable to drifting out of education, and they have worked very hard during the lockdown to check on these young people and keep them engaged.

“We would support any programme to provide extra support to help schools and colleges in this task over the coming months.”