Martyn Oliver says change in working habits since pandemic has led to a shift in attitudes among pupils in England. School attendance rates are being affected by parents working from home after the pandemic, the head of Ofsted has said. The chief inspector of the schools watchdog in England, Martyn Oliver, told the Sunday Times that the widespread change in working habits after the pandemic had led to a shift in attitudes among pupils.
“If my mum and dad were at home all day, would I want to get up and leave the house, knowing that they were both there? I would be tempted to perhaps say, ‘Can I not stay with you?’” said Oliver, a former secondary school art teacher and headteacher. “[After the pandemic] suddenly people were used to working from home and, in many cases, I don’t think there was that same desire to have their child in school while they were at home,” he said.
“They had been used to it for the best part of a year and a half, on and off, during lockdown. That changed something.”. Nearly a seventh of primary school children and a quarter of state secondary pupils are persistently absent, according to official figures, missing at least one day every two weeks. Across England, persistent absences in all state secondary schools rose from 13% in 2018-19 to 24% in 2022-23.
While a small number of schools allow children to be “flexi-schooled”, where parents can teach their children from home for part of the week, Oliver said Fridays had always been the worst attendance day. And in Westminster, where the watchdog is based, he often sees “the place clearing out” on a Thursday night. “I think developing good social habits of getting up in the morning, putting your shoes on instead of your slippers, going out to work, going to school, expecting to complete a full day’s school, a full day’s work, clearly that’s habit-forming,” added Oliver.
Other factors such as poor mental health, anxiety and depression were also contributing to poorer pupil attendance rates, he said, in addition to a lack of funding for school services including nurses and child psychologists and limiting screen time. While some companies such as JP Morgan, Amazon and Boots have requested staff to return to offices full-time since the pandemic, many others still have flexible arrangements, with some insisting on at least three days a week in the office.
While Oliver believes the working-from-home culture will persist, so too will the inevitable challenges that brings to schools. “We’re still going to have to deal with the fact that there are great things you can do really efficiently behind a screen now,” he said. “But you can’t deny that a child accessing other children, other adults and learning to socialise, is a clear benefit of schooling.”.
