In June 2015 OFSTED inspectors reported national findings of inconsistent practices for recording and reporting cases where children are removed from schools.
School roll - pupil to be deleted from school register
This raised serious concerns about safeguarding issues with children potentially exposed to the risk of harm, exploitation or radicalisation.
Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, therefore, recommended that the government strengthen regulations to ensure that schools provide regular and accurate information to their local authority about children as they are added to or removed from school admissions registers.
During Spring 2016 the Department for Education consulted on improving information in identifying children missing education (CME), which set out to improve communication and co-ordination between schools, including independent schools, and Local Authorities.
The outcome of the consultation lead to the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006 being amended on 22 July 2016 (which came into effect on 1 September 2016).
Under Regulation 12 of the 2016 amendment, schools are now legally required to notify their local authority of every new entry to the admission register within five days of the pupil being enrolled. In addition to this, every deletion from the school register must also be notified to the local authority, as soon as one of the statutory grounds for deletion (regulation 8 of the 2006 regulations) has been satisfied and not later than the date on which the pupil is removed from roll.
Procedures for adding or removing a child's name from the roll of a school (PDF, 330KB)
For pupils who have been unauthorised absent from school for 20 continuous days and contact cannot be made with the parent/carer to establish the reason for the absence, schools will need to complete the CME audit form and attach it to the online form.
CME audit form (DOCX, 426KB)
If you have any queries, contact:
07870 278320