The new pandemic? Mental health issues driving the rise in persistent absences from school

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world as we knew it – mandatory lockdowns, closure of public services and a death toll totalling over 226,000 in Britain alone.

However, despite the World Health Organisation (WHO) officially declaring the pandemic over a few weeks ago, its lasting effects are still surfacing today.

One of the consequences of consecutive lockdowns and work-from-home orders relates to continued absences. Despite the government recommending a "gradual return to work" in the summer of 2021, almost two years ago, many workplaces are experiencing a persistent reluctance from employees to head back to the office.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, remote and hybrid working had been increasing gradually. Between January and December 2019, around 1 in 10 (12%) of the British workforce had worked at least one day from home in the previous week and around 1 in 20 (5%) reported working mainly from home.

However, as a result of the pandemic, and the subsequent lockdowns aimed at reducing the spread of the virus, how people worked completely changed.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that the number of adults working from home rose to almost 50 per cent during the lockdown.

As pandemic restrictions have been lifted, these numbers have gradually decreased again, but remain higher than pre-pandemic numbers. In September 2022, around one in five (22%) of the British workforce had worked at least one day from home in the previous week and around one in eight (13%) worked from home exclusively.

Further survey data from 2021 and 2022 estimate that more than 80 per cent of employees who worked from home because of the pandemic prefer a hybrid working model.

While flexible working has been shown to have several benefits - increased well-being and self-reported productivity and work satisfaction - as a result of decreased in-office hours, many organisations are facing difficulties in staff interaction, collaboration, engagement and connection, as well as some negative impacts on working culture and productivity losses.

And the COVID-19 pandemic didn't just result in the normalisation of working from home. It also gave rise to reluctance from parents to send their children to school.

Since the first lockdown was enforced in March 2020, school absence has been the subject of much discussion and debate. Recently, mounting evidence has surfaced of widening attainment gaps among school pupils in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The high levels of absenteeism during the peak of the pandemic have continued to rise since schools reopened, and have now become entrenched in the form of higher rates of persistent absence.

Data shows that in the 2022 autumn term, the overall absence rate was 7.5 per cent, compared with 4.9 per cent in autumn 2019 (the last term of data before the pandemic). It had been consistently below 5 per cent in recent years before 2019. Overall absence is now at its highest level since the start of our series in 2006.

The Department for Education attributes most of the increase in absence to illness (which includes positive COVID-19 cases) which increased from 2.8 per cent in autumn 2019 to 4.5 per cent in autumn 2022.

However, there has also been a smaller but notable increase in unauthorised absence over this period, from 1.3 per cent to 2.1 per cent.

Persistent absence is defined as when a pupil misses at least 10 per cent of possible sessions. This translates to around 7 days of absence across a term. The overall rate of persistent absence has risen sharply, from 13.1 per cent of all pupils in autumn 2019 to 24.2 per cent in autumn 2022 – its highest rate since the start of our series in 2006. To put this into perspective, a persistent absence rate of 24.2 per cent equates to over 1.7 million pupils.

What is the reason for this increase?

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25 per cent, according to a scientific brief released by the WHO.

Supporting this data, the mental health charity "Mind" found that around a third of adults and young people said their mental health has got much worse since March 2020.

During the lockdowns, many young people felt isolated and this triggered a rise in anxiety and depression, particularly in those who couldn't attend school or work as a result of the pandemic.

The pandemic also caused fears around illness to become heightened, a problem now being driven by worsening support for mental health due to the strain experienced by the NHS and the cost of living crisis.

Years of spending cuts to mental health services since 2010 alongside an increased demand for treatment, have exacerbated the crisis we are now facing.

An estimated 8 million people in England with mental health problems cannot get specialist help because they are not considered sick enough to qualify, NHS leaders have revealed.

This has led the Royal College of Psychiatrists and other organisations to renew their call for properly funded and staffed mental healthcare services.

NHS Providers says the amount spent on mental health care in England needs to rise from £14.3 billion to at least £17.15 billion from next year to help cope with spiralling demand.

Sam Cordery, Deputy Chief Executive of NHS Providers, which represents England's 54 specialist mental health trusts, says that as a minimum, the mental health sector needs an additional £850 million a year to treat at current levels and deal with the backlog, plus a minimum of £2 billion to deal with the most urgent capital demands.

As a result of this "new pandemic", 38 per cent of British businesses are affected by the rise in mental health-related sick leave by employees, and research also showed that 52 per cent of businesses agree that employees' mental health has declined since the pandemic.

Interestingly, the research found that the cost-of-living crisis has contributed to this decline, with 53 per cent of businesses stating it has affected their employees' mental health.

Clearly, the cost of living crisis isn't just putting a strain on mental health services - it is also causing a decline in people's mental well-being.

According to research by the British Medical Association, two-thirds (66%) of therapists say the cost of living concerns are causing a decline in people's mental health.

For students, balancing their finances was a challenge before a cost-of-living crisis gripped the nation. Now, for many, the maintenance loans offered are not even close to covering the costs associated with university living.

The annual increase for maintenance support in the 2022/23 academic year was based on forecast inflation of 2.3 per cent. Inflation, based on the consumer prices index, stood at 11.1 per cent in November 2022.

As a result, students are struggling to balance the rising cost of food and bills. One student claims his gas and electricity bill has increased from £56 per month last year to £94.

A student at Glasgow University says he and his housemates regularly have to generate warmth through electric blankets and portable heaters; ice-cold showers are routine.

The mental toll is significant. A reported 90 per cent of students surveyed by the National Union of Students said the rising living costs had led to concerns about being able to eat, feed their family and pay bills and had affected their mental health.

The impact of the pandemic, followed by a cost-of-living crisis, has meant that even when life has begun to return to normal again, the mental health of many young people has continued to deteriorate.

Headteachers and school leaders also attribute the rise in absences to a "cultural shift" in attitudes as a result of the Covid pandemic.

According to teachers, parents are now more reluctant to send children to school and more resistant to efforts to encourage attendance, with some school leaders in England warning it may take years to repair national attendance figures.

Sheila Mouna, the headteacher at St Anne's and Guardian Angels Catholic primary school in East London, said while parents had become more anxious about their children going to school, others were more willing to let them stay home since the pandemic.

"I think there's been a cultural shift with people working at home, and some people - not all - seem to think their kids did OK at home, so things like that have become ingrained in some parents' minds."

The normalisation of learning from home occurred as a result of the three Covid lockdowns, whereby students were forced to attend school through the medium of online lessons, on platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

However, the idea of a more permanent "cultural shift" is a worrying one for teachers, and is supported by evidence presented to MPs on the Commons Education Select Committee.

The research found that parents are more cautious about sending their children to school with minor ailments as a result of public health messaging during the pandemic.

In its evidence to the committee, which is investigating school absence, Essex Council said: "Anxiety and mental health concerns are one of the most significant drivers behind our recent increase in persistent/severe absence from school.

"We have noted a significant growth in the cohort of children and families who struggle to leave their homes. Some of these families were experiencing anxiety before the pandemic but many of the current mental health and anxiety presentations appear to have developed during the pandemic/lockdown periods."

The council said mental health support services were unable to cope with the growing number of cases. "As a result, our schools report a significant growth in the cohort of children who either do not attend school whilst they await their assessment and treatment or have persistent/severe absence patterns which can be difficult to challenge," it said.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said schools had been forced to make cuts in pastoral support, making it harder to encourage vulnerable children to attend.

So, it seems mental health is at the centre of this new pandemic. A rise in anxiety, particularly related to health and illness, and worsened by a lack of funding for mental health services and the NHS, is driving persistent absences from education.

Such is the concern over persistent absence, that in January 2023 the Education Committee launched an inquiry into the issue, with a focus on supporting disadvantaged pupils. The results are due to be published in July 2023.

The government also aims to address concerns over a rise in non-attendance through new plans to support pupils to drive up attendance rates in schools and improve pupils' attainment and welfare.

This includes the expansion of attendance programs which aim to get more children into school.

Nine new lead hub schools will be created, alongside the extension of Attendance Mentors in areas of the country with the highest levels of pupil absence.

The new attendance hub leads will support up to 600 primary, secondary and alternative provision schools in England to improve their attendance by sharing effective practices and practical resources.

Practice shared by hubs may include rolling out automatic text messaging to parents where pupils do not attend school and using data effectively to identify children at risk of poor attendance to intervene early.

The expansion of the attendance mentors programme, delivered by children's charity Barnardo's, will see trained mentors work directly with 1,665 persistently and severely absent children and their families across Knowsley, Doncaster, Stoke-on-Trent and Salford to understand and overcome the barriers to attendance and support them getting back into school.

The government's existing strategy revolves around a national attendance data dashboard providing more up-to-date attendance data so schools can target the most vulnerable, as well as the work of the National Attendance Action Alliance, a program specifically focused on attendance in schools.

The Department of Education also published a call for evidence on children missing education – those neither on a school roll nor being suitably home-educated.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb admitted that the pandemic is still having "a real impact" on pupil absence in school.

However, he insists that there is evidence the government's approach is working.

"North Shore Academy has significantly improved its pupil attendance rates despite having almost three times more disadvantaged pupils than the national average. Last year the national absence rate in schools was 9 per cent whereas North Shore Academy was 8.2 per cent."

One thing is clear: persistent absences from school, the result of worsening mental health, is a serious issue which is unlikely to go away any time soon.