Dropout rate hits 100,000 in UK schools

A 'lost generation' of up to 100,000 children has vanished without trace from the British school system, a report warns this week.

Schools are losing track of teenagers who drop out, or who suffer chaotic home lives with repeated moves - while in some cases, heads appear to have deliberately resisted giving places to troubled children likely to drag down their performances in exam league tables, it concludes.

The study by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (Nacro), commissioned by the Government to investigate the phenomenon of the 'disappeared', exposes the alarming ease with which children can simply slip through the net.

Some were long-term truants whose parents appeared to have lost interest in whether they went to school. But in other cases parents had tried but failed to get them places. With schools under heavy pressure to improve, the report warns, 'it can be in the interests of schools to "lose" children who present difficulties: those whose behaviour is extremely difficult to manage; and those who have fallen so behind with the national curriculum that it is unlikely they will sit, let alone pass, GCSEs.'

It was the 'overwhelming belief' of parents and workers interviewed that children were sometimes denied places because of the pressure to improve exam results.

Children were defined as missing if they had had no contact with a school or LEA for six months, nor home tuition or places in referral units for those with behaviour problems. Some of those identified by Nacro - which targeted 11 projects working with children who had fallen through the net, across the country - had been 'missing' for as long as four years, yet interviewers found many of them desperately wanted to be in school.

The prospects for such long-term dropouts can be bleak: 41 per cent of children referred to Youth Offending Teams have had disrupted schooling. 'It is evident that not having an education means that a child's opportunity to fulfil its potential as an adult is hampered. This has costs for the child, the community in which they live and wider society,' the report concludes. The estimate of 100,000 'disappeared' children stems from a study in Blackpool, which found one LEA alone had 'lost' more than 380 children.

One key group were children in care, with authorities under no obligation to inform LEAs when children switched foster placements: paperwork often went missing when they moved, the report found, and LEAs lost track of them. Others were the children of parents who - involved in crime, domestic violence or with other reasons to hide from statutory agencies - 'can quite effectively disappear', the report noted.

There was also little financial incentive for schools to admit that children had effectively dropped out: in some cases heads had hung on to the funding that went with each child up to three years after they were last seen in the classroom.

Sam Sykes, who runs a Nacro project in Lambeth, south London, for children out of school, said a common problem was older teenagers arriving from the Caribbean and finding it impossible to find a school. The project offers tuition in basic subjects like maths and English to children referred from youth offending teams, schools or other routes, many of whom have been permanently excluded.

'Without this project, most of them would be out there creating havoc,' he said. 'We are dealing with around 40 to 50 kids and we can't actually cope with the numbers that we are now getting.'

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills admitted the report raised some fair criticisms, but said the Government was now committed to guaranteeing some form of alternative education to every excluded child. He added: 'The Department is concerned about the numbers of children missing from school rolls. We are determined to tackle the cases of children missing education and support those at risk of being so.'