It is “abysmal” that the government allows a fifth of students to leave school with no qualifications, the outgoing children’s commissioner has said.
These children “fall through the gaps” because Whitehall views them as “remote concepts or data points on an annual return” - and officials don’t try to “understand their world”, Anne Longfield said in her final speech in the post this morning.
Reflecting on her six-year spell as children’s commissioner for England, Ms Longfield said: “I have been shocked to discover how many officials have never met any of the children they are responsible for.
“So many seem to view them as remote concepts or data points on an annual return. This is how children fall through the gaps - because too often the people in charge of the systems they need simply don’t see them and try to understand their world.”
Disadvantaged students leaving education without basic qualifications
She added that it should be a “national scandal” that so many pupils spend 14 years in education only to leave without any basic qualifications.
“That is abysmal...I don’t know what’s more shocking: that these things happen or that they’re hardly recognised,” she said.
“No one can honestly believe that 20 per cent of children are incapable of achieving basic qualifications. It should be a national scandal.”
Longfield also described how she had to “force” ministers to discuss data her staff had collated that showed “the best possible information on the needs of children and the help they are or aren’t getting”.
”[The government] should be biting my hand off to find out more, see the data, and make use of it. Instead, I have to force officials and ministers to the table, to watch them sit through a presentation, maybe ask a question, and then vacantly walk away,” she said.
Watch the full speech here:
You need a Tes subscription to read this article
Subscribe now to read this article and get other subscriber-only content:
