Sheffield education chief warns that children missing school for holidays has “profound” impact on exam grades

Meredith Dixon-Teasdale, strategic director of children’s services at Sheffield City Council, said that the impact is likely to be “profound”. She was speaking at a meeting of the council’s education, children and families policy committee yesterday (February 4).

Coun Mohammed Mahroof raised the issue during a discussion on the performance of city children against various targets, in order to see which areas need most support. One example is the percentage of Key Stage 4 pupils achieving level 4+ in English and maths.

The report was presented by James Ford, council assistant director of performance and insight. He told councillors that the number of children who are persistently absent from school has improved since 2021/22.

Coun Mahroof said that some people take their children out of school for significant amounts of time to visit family and friends, thinking the whole thing will be forgotten about by the school after the children return from holiday.

He said that he was worried about the impact of families taking their children out of school for three to five weeks at a time.

Ambitious

Mr Ford replied: “We’re still massively ambitious for attendance to be better.” He said that primary attendance has improved and more effort needs to be focused on secondary pupils.

A campaign is being launched to encourage the parents and carers of secondary school children to see school as a really positive thing, said Mr Ford. He added: “Punitive measures do have a place and an impact but they are not the whole picture.

“Some areas in the city have really high mobility. We will target support where we can.”

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He said that one parent interviewed on BBC Look North said they thought of fines for their children missing school as a holiday tax factored into the total cost of a trip.

Coun Mahroof asked if staggered term times in schools would help. Meredith Dixon Teasdale, strategic director of children’s services, replied: “You create as many problems as you do answers, such as for parents who have kids at different schools.”

She said that the government needs to talk to travel agencies to tackle the issue of prices going up during school holidays.

Myth

Ms Dixon Teasdale added: “The figures show a stark difference in the number of days in school having a profound impact on exam results. People think it’s only a small amount of time but it really does have a profound effect on attainment.”

Committee chair Coun Dawn Dale said that the myth that pupils only “play with papier mache and games” in the run-up to Christmas, so it won’t make a difference if they miss school at that time, needs to be busted.

“The curriculum is completely different, the workload is different and so is the amount of learning that children and young people do now. There’s the importance of building blocks required to move on in certain subjects, such as missing a chunk of maths or science.

“There’s also the importance of friendship and belonging. If you’re absent from school you miss out on building those positive relationships and friendship groups and dynamics.

“You might feel you are doing them a favour by having a fantastic holiday with siblings but they need to make those friendship groups.”