the latest attendance data from the Department for Education.
While overall attendance rates for state pupils continued to slowly improve following the Covid pandemic, those for children with special needs went in the opposite direction – rising to 12.6% sessions missed in 2023-24, up from 12.3% the previous year. The equivalent figure for those with no identified special needs was 6.3%.
Among children with education, health and care plans (EHCPs), issued for identified special needs, there was a sharp rise in those classed as “severely absent”, who are absent for at least half of the school year, to 6.8% last year from 5.9% in 2022-23 and more than double the pre-pandemic rate of 3.3%. The increase among children with Send accounted for the national increase in severe absence, to 2.3% from 2%.
Munira Wilson, the Lib Dem spokesperson for education, said:
Parents are forced to fight for the education their children are entitled to, and all too often children feel trapped in a system that can’t cater to their needs. That’s what leads to shocking absence rates like these.
The government inherited a mess when it came to Send provision, but we need to see action and we need to see results. The pace of change is simply too slow.
its news release, the Treasury explains the change like this.
Currently, departments track their own spending and performance, and share data with the Treasury via manual uploads in online spreadsheets and physical letters. This means the Treasury does not have real time access to departments the finance and performance management data and cannot see in real time departmental spending and its impact.
To address inefficiencies, the chief secretary has formed plans to transform government’s approach to understanding, tracking, and evaluating spending across departments.
Under these new plans, ministers will have access to live and real-time performance data at both a departmental and programme level.
This means ministers will be able to see in real time what programmes are over or under spending, which projects are delivering and not, and how departments are performing against their budgets and objectives.
In his speech to the IfG, Jones said that this type of real-time data monitoring was normal in the private sector. He said that, when he arrived at the Treasury, he expected to find it operating like this too. But instead he found it operating like a bank, handing out money to its customers, attaching conditions, and then learning retrospectively if the cash was spent wisely.
Jones claimed the new system would allow goverment to operate more efficiently. He explained:
The transparency that we want will make it easier for the Treasury to continue to manage public money robustly, but in return they will have to be fewer conditions, better levels of delegation and a reduction in the amount of reporting and compliance against too many KPIs [key performance indicators].
10.36am.)
In a Q&A at the Institute for Government thinktank, asked about this claim, Jones replied:
Just factually, it would be incorrect to say that we are doing what the Conservatives did after 2010.
The numbers will be published next Wednesday, but as you saw at the budget last year, we are increasing public spending, and we’ve increased it quite a lot.
The fact is that we’ve got to do this modernisation and reform agenda. But we’re not, factually, taking an approach that is just blindly cutting spending because we think we should just reduce spending without a plan for how to get there. So I wouldn’t recognise that kind of definition of what’s taking place.
House of Lords reform floating around Westminster (which is one reason why nothing much ever seems to happen). Today Assemble, the grassroots democracy group which organised the six-person demonstration that disrupted proceedings in the Lords today, has put forward a simple idea for a replacement chamber. It says the Lords should be replaced with a House of the People, with members chosen by lot.
In a statement on today’s protest, it says:
Today’s action has been taken in support of the abolition of the House of Lords in favour of a House of the People – a new institution where any adult in the UK may be selected to serve, like a jury, to set the political agenda and balance the House of Commons. This action mirrors one undertaken by Suffragettes on October 28th 1908, where they took direct action by raining handbills onto the House of Commons, demanding suffrage for women in the UK …
A public-led institution like a House of the People will produce fairer, more effective, and more democratic outcomes than the existing parliamentary system, which is not fit for purpose. The recent election saw the lowest turnout and vote count for two decades, yet produced a prime minister with the strongest majority. Polls show that most British people are in favour of replacing the House of Lords, with a permanent rolling citizens’ assembly as the favourite alternative.
Assemble is one of various organistions inviting people to volunteer to be chosen by lottery to participate in a House of the People this summer that would work up plans for constitutional change.
Christina Jenkins, 31, a care worker from Cwmbran and one of the people who took part in today’s protest, said in a statement on Assemble’s website:
We need a People’s House, not a house of wealthy elites. Lords: give up your seat! How can we a real democracy when we’re only given the chance to vote once every five years? Even then, so many people don’t vote because their voices still go unheard.”
Whether it’s the spiralling cost of living crisis, insecure housing, wars or the climate crisis, you don’t have to look far to see the symptoms of a broken political system. We need to hand the power back to the people with participatory politics like citizens’ assemblies if we stand any chance of addressing the real issues facing Britain.
House of Lords earlier. PA says:
The protesters said they were acting on behalf of Assemble, an organisation that campaigns for the House of Lords to be abolished and replaced by a citizens’ assembly.
Citizens’ assemblies are selected by sortition, which means members of the public are picked at random via a lottery.
Supporters of this mechanism argue it means a more representative sample of the population are able to come together and debate important issues.
As they were escorted out, the protesters sang a song encouraging people to “take back the Commons” and “raise a glass to Thomas Paine”.
Thomas Paine is an English-born American founding father who was a strong advocate for democracy, rejecting monarchy and aristocracy.
One woman shouted in the chamber that they were protesting like the Suffragettes, who were known to demonstrate in the Houses of Parliament for the cause of votes for women.
The QR code on their leaflets leads to an invite to enter the lottery for a so-called House of the People, which says it will “debut as a parallel Parliament” in July 2025.
a statement, he said that he was leaving the party after 41 years because “I cannot be true to my principles and condemn the Tory cuts to the most vulnerable and not condemn the government.”a story for the Daily Telegraph.
She says at the last election parliamentary candidates were also asked to sign NDAs. And she says some council candidates have been asked to sign NDAs ahead of the May elections, although the party has indicated that happened by mistake and it says council candidates are not subject to gagging orders.
In her story, Holl-Allen reports:
The practice is unusual – neither the Conservatives, Labour nor the Liberal Democrats use NDAs for branch officials or candidates …
In a copy of the NDA, seen by The Telegraph, branch members are prohibited from divulging private information about the “activities, communication and electoral functions” of the party.
The document terms are drawn up so widely that they could leave individuals open to legal attack for divulging information such as what goes on at private meetings or details of the party leadership.
The NDA said it covered all confidential information relating to “all activities, communication, and electoral functions with the intention of using it primarily for the broad purpose of our political, campaigning and fundraising activities”.
In a statement to the party, Reform UK defended the policy. A spokesperson said:
Reform UK are committed to the highest standards of data security. Like any professional organisation, we expect those responsible for managing large amounts of member and candidate personal information to keep it secure.
his previous remarks that there had been a “breach of international law” by Israel.
Speaking in the Commons, Lammy said the resumption of Israeli military action in Gaza had resulted in an “appalling loss of life”. He said:
On the night of March 18, Israel launched air strikes across Gaza. A number of Hamas figures were reportedly killed, but it’s been reported that over 400 Palestinians were killed in missile strikes and artillery barrages. The majority of them were women and children.
This appears to have been the deadliest single day for Palestinians since the war began. This is an appalling loss of life, and we mourn the loss of every civilian.
Lammy confirmed a British national was amongst those wounded after a UN compound was hit on Wednesday. He said the UK was urgently calling for return to a ceasefire.
Hamas has been resisting calls for the release of further hostages in return for a longer truce.
Israeli forces did not begin to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor as agreed and on March 2 the Israeli government announced it was blocking all further aid deliveries until Hamas agreed to its terms.
For weeks now, supplies of basic goods and electricity have been blocked, leaving over half a million civilians once again cut off from clean drinking water and sparking a 200% surge in the price of some basic foodstuffs; a boon to those criminals who use violence to control supplies.
As I told the house on Monday, this is appalling and unacceptable. Ultimately, of course, these are matters for the courts, not governments, to determine, but it’s difficult to see how denying humanitarian assistance to a civilian population can be compatible with international humanitarian law.
Though it’s important to say I could have been a little clearer in the House on Monday, our position remains that Israel’s actions in Gaza are a clear risk of breaching international humanitarian law.
House of Lords to save the UK.”
One protester, who wished to be known only as Christina, said:
We did this action on behalf of Assemble and the ask is that, instead of a House of Lords, which is a house of unelected wealthy elites, we have a house of the people.
So, we have citizens’ assemblies where people can participate in real democracy, instead of having everything handed to them from up high.
Another woman, who also referred to herself as Christina, said:
If people enter into assemblies and a house of the people via sortition, that’s real representation where people get a say on real issues that matter to them, which are not getting processed by the government or parliament.
The cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, the climate crisis, it’s a mess, and we need people with real representation to start making a difference and having a say.
House of Lords have been disrupted by protesters, this morning. ITV News has the clip. Campaigners in the gallery started shouting “Lords out, people in”, and dropping leaflets into the chamber.
9.45am). Here are some of the key lines.
This year will be … the first time since the general election – the greatest defeat in our party’s history – that we fight these seats. If you map that general election result of 2024 on to this coming May, then we don’t win the councils we won in 2021, we lose almost every single one.
She said that thought the party would probably “do a bit better than that”, the elections would nevertheless be “extremely difficult”.
We are the only credible choice: Lib Dems will wreck your public services, Reform has no experience running anything, Greens will run councils into the ground and Labour will spend, tax and waste your money, just like they always do.
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She restated her attack on “showbusiness” politicians. Echoing the argument she made in a Telegraph interview earlier this week (see 11.49am), she said:
This is not showbusiness. This is not a game. This is about people’s lives. This is not for us. It is for all those people out there who need credible politicians. That is what we’re offering.
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Kevin Hollinrake, the shadow housing secretary, told the event that the Tories have been doing relatively well in local council byelections. He said:
Since the general election, we’ve won twice as many seats in terms of net gains compared to any other party. We know we can do this.
Hollinrake may have been referring to these figures from the Lib Dem activist and elections expert Mark Pack, showing the Tories on a net gain of 22 seats, double the net gain of 12 seats achieved by Reform UK.
Source: theguardian.com
