Journal article
Exploring school absences for children in care in England: systemic pressures, local challenges and admissions resistance
- Abstract:
- Educational outcomes for children in care in England are significantly below national averages and addressing this is a high social justice and policy priority. One facet is this group’s higher-than-average school absence rates and this paper begins by exploring data between geographical areas, highlighting important correlations with special educational needs and disabilities, exclusions and housing arrangements. We then draw on focus group discussions among 26 Virtual School Headteachers; senior leaders in local authorities with statutory responsibility for supporting the education of children in care through advocacy and engagement with local schools. These illuminate the reasons why children in care are disproportionately absent from school. First, there is widespread resistance to admitting children in care, with some schools also being quick to exclude. Second, limited capacity leads to administrative delays in resourcing support for special educational needs and disabilities. Third, there are shortages in high-quality specialist provision for young people with complex needs. We discuss these empirical findings as an issue of procedural justice in the wider policy context, highlighting the tensions between government discourses around inclusive education and a high-stakes accountability environment, where the majority of schools now have significant autonomy over admissions and behaviour policies with little democratic oversight.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.5MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/02680939.2026.2671147
Authors
- Publisher:
- Taylor & Francis Group
- Journal:
- Journal of Education Policy More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2026-05-18
- Acceptance date:
- 2026-04-29
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1464-5106
- ISSN:
-
0268-0939
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2412804
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2412804
- Deposit date:
-
2026-05-01
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Harrison et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record