PUPILS missing school is one of the biggest challenges facing local authorities a lay member of a Blaenau Gwent committee has said.

At a meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s Governance and Audit committee on Wednesday, October 9 the figures around school absence and exclusion rates was brought up for discussion.

This was during an item where councillors and independent lay members looked at the council’s draft annual performance self-assessment.

Publishing the self-assessment is an annual legal requirement for local authorities in Wales.

The data in the document shows that non-attendance figures were at 86.6 per cent for 2023/2024 in secondary schools and 90.7 per cent for primary schools.

These figures are a slight improvement on 2022/2023 which showed non-attendance was at 85.5 per cent in secondary schools and 90.4 per cent at primary schools.

However, they fall a long way short of where Blaenau Gwent schools were at before the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2018/2019, the non-attendance figures for secondary schools was at 93.4 per cent and primary school were at 94.3 per cent.

Lay member Martin Veale said: “For me of all the problems local government faces right now, school attendance is I think one of the biggest as it’s creating a generation of missed opportunities.

“It’s not specific to Blaenau Gwent it’s a Wales and UK wide issue, but the statistics for both secondary and primary school attendance are frankly terrible.

“We used to have this aspiration of 95 per cent attendance at school which meant 1 child in 20 on average.

“The latest statistics are 86 per cent (secondary) and 90 per cent for primary that means three times as many children are not getting an education than previously, and I think that’s an enormous issue.”

Director of education Luisa Munro-Morris said: “This is a key priority for the education directorate we are running a campaign at the moment with corporate communications which is: ‘everyday matters’.

“We’ve had some success already, one of our schools has significantly improved their attendance, they are following the local authority’s education pathway very closely, so we’re learning form their experience.”

Dr Munro-Morris added that her department would be working with their counterparts in Torfaen who have “been on a real journey” around attendance.

She explained that Torfaen risen from the bottom of all 22 Wales local authorities to third on this issue.

“We are going to be learning from their experiences, ” said Dr Munro-Morris.

The report also explains that the number of school exclusions issued to pupil had gone up by 231 as well as four exclusions being permanent.

This means that the pupils who were excluded from schools lost 253 day’s worth of education.

Reasons for these exclusions given in the report are disruptive behaviour, verbal abuse/threatening behaviour against an adult and physical assault against another pupil.

Dr Munro-Morris added that it was also a priority to reduce permanent and fixed term exclusions and that there was “fantastic” work going on in some schools to reduce the rates.

Dr Munro-Morris explained that new provision would be implemented from January to help pupils who are “dis-regulated” and need extra support.

This would come in a pilot scheme run Youth Services in secondary schools, which could be extended to primary schools if it “works.”

Dr Munro-Morris said: “It’s to support young people who are struggling in mainstream, and we want to give them the skill set to be able to manage and cope.

“We are doing a lot as we recognise this is a key problem, but we have to do more.”

The committee noted the draft self-assessment – which will go on to be discussed a full council meeting later this month.