Ofsted: 'It's too easy to overlook other risks'

“It is also too easy to overlook other risks, for example street level grooming and/or peer on peer abuse or exploitation, that young people may be exposed to when they are absent from school.”

“In that local authority, the education welfare service had access to a ‘persistent absence list’, which they used to target young people whose pattern of school attendance may indicate other concerns, including a risk of child sexual exploitation. The fact that there was such as list made it possible to combine and analyse data in order to identify trends and patterns and explore possible links to child sexual exploitation or gang related activity.

“Most of the local authorities inspected did not have a centrally held database of children and young people with high levels of school absence. This meant that it was not possible to cross-reference that information with information about children and young people known to children’s social care at risk of child exploitation or those who have been reported to the police as missing.”