Written question asked by Julian Sturdy (Conservative) on Thursday, 8 September 2011, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 12 September 2011. It was answered by Nick Gibb (Conservative) on Monday, 10 October 2011 on behalf of the Department for Education.

Pupils: Attendance

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Education what steps he is taking to improve school attendance.

Answer: We are taking a number of steps to improve school attendance. In particular we have reduced the threshold at which a pupil is defined as persistently absent to where a pupil is absent for more than 15% of their schooling, down from 20%. We will continue to look at the possibility of further lowering the threshold over time.There are a range of parental responsibility measures available to tackle poor attendance, which include parenting contracts; parenting orders; penalty notices; and prosecutions. Charlie Taylor, the Department's independent adviser on school behaviour, along with a team of teaching professionals, will be undertaking a review of these measures in order to make them more effective and to encourage schools to make more use of them.We will be publishing school level absence data in both the combined autumn and spring term and annual statistical releases.As part of the new Ofsted inspections framework inspectors will, from January 2012, be looking at school attendance as part the wider behaviour strand of the framework.

Secondary information