What are we actually trying to achieve?

Education is not a building, an attendance register, a funding category or a certificate. These may be parts of an educational system, but they are not its purpose.

The purpose is to help people learn, develop understanding, acquire skills, discover their capabilities and participate meaningfully in society.

This workbook looks at the barriers created by school attendance procedures, the treatment of returning pupils, the cost of proving illness, the availability of alternative learning and the financial commitments that can follow people into adulthood.

What the system rewards

There are several interests involved, and they do not always align.

School funding is not simply a payment for each day a pupil sits in a classroom. It involves pupil numbers, school characteristics and other factors. Attendance is also monitored and carries institutional consequences. The important question is whether the measures institutions are required to report can become more influential than the educational outcomes they are meant to support.

Why does a system capable of delivering education through technology make families fight an administrative battle before their children can access it?

When a child comes back

A returning pupil should be welcomed back into education, not made to feel that their presence is an inconvenience or that they have to earn their place again.

• No public identification or embarrassment because of previous absence.
• No assumption that a returning child is disruptive, difficult or a problem.
• No expectation to catch up on months of missed work immediately.
• Agreed adjustments treated as legitimate arrangements, not favours.
• Progress measured through learning, engagement, confidence and development.

A different route to the same educational entitlement does not lower standards. It removes a barrier that was preventing the child from reaching them.

What are we protecting when we protect the standards of an institution at the expense of the child’s experience of education?

No victimising

A child must not become a target for staff frustration, resentment, ridicule or punishment. This includes subtle behaviours: sarcasm about previous absence, publicly questioning commitment, treating adjustments as privileges, making an example of the child or making them feel indebted to staff.

Teachers have legitimate responsibilities around learning, standards and classroom order. Those responsibilities do not justify humiliating a pupil. Teachers also need training, resources and time to deliver alternative pathways rather than being left to improvise around needs the system has not properly supported.

How can a child safely raise a concern about the very adults responsible for supporting their education?

Design pathways, not punishments

The proposal is not to abandon classroom education or transfer responsibility to parents. It is to make sure that a child remains connected to learning when physical attendance is not currently possible.

Safeguarding must remain. But safeguarding and punishment are not interchangeable. Support should be meaningful, timely and proportionate. Fines, prosecution or social intervention cannot substitute for identifying and addressing the barrier to education.

How many problems we currently spend money policing could be prevented if more of that resource went into better pathways in the first place?

One school, multiple ways to learn

Every school should provide an integrated online learning portal as part of its educational provision. It should be available when a pupil cannot attend physically, with the arrangements tailored to the child’s circumstances.

This is not a request for parents to become teachers, pay for private alternatives or construct their own curriculum. The school remains responsible for education. The portal provides another route into that provision.

What the portal should contain

• Age-appropriate curriculum content and a clear learning plan.
• Interactive activities that are engaging, alongside challenging work that develops understanding.
• Teacher explanations, feedback, questions and opportunities to ask for help.
• Assessment and progress records that continue across learning pathways.
• Safe opportunities for social learning and appropriate contact with classmates.
• Accessible design across phones, tablets and computers.
• A named point of contact when a pupil or parent needs support.
• A route between online, hybrid and classroom learning without starting again.

A phone or tablet should provide a meaningful starting point. Where a family lacks a suitable device, reliable internet or a quiet place to work, the school and relevant services should identify what support is needed. Digital provision must not create a new inequality.

If a school can provide lessons through a screen when circumstances demand it, why should that capability not form part of its planned educational infrastructure?

Medical evidence and the family purse

When a child is ill, the parent normally informs the school. Problems arise when the school treats a doctor’s letter as a routine condition for accepting or recording that explanation.

Some GP practices charge for private administrative letters. The amount varies. A family may therefore be expected to pay to obtain a document for an institutional process, even where the child’s illness has already been reported and no additional clinical intervention is required.

This is not evidence of a formal commercial agreement between schools and GP practices. It is a structural question about the consequences of the process: a school may request evidence, a practice may charge for non-NHS administrative work, and a family may feel it has no practical choice but to pay.

The combined effect can leave a family poorer without improving the child’s access to education. It also raises a question about whether health professionals are being drawn into routine attendance administration that could have been handled more simply.

What the guidance says

England’s Department for Education attendance guidance, updated in July 2026, says schools should not routinely request medical evidence for illness absences or apply blanket requirements. In most cases, a parent’s notification can be accepted. Where there is genuine and reasonable doubt or a particular need for further information, schools can seek evidence, but should be flexible about its form and avoid unnecessary burdens.

The argument is not that GPs should work for nothing. It is that families should not be made to finance avoidable administrative transactions when the same resources could help build the educational provision that is missing.

How much money, staff time and family income are being consumed by attendance verification that could instead be invested in educational access?

When a support problem becomes a compliance problem

Attendance law and safeguarding responsibilities exist for important reasons. Children should not be deprived of education, and serious concerns about a child’s welfare must be taken seriously.

But enforcement cannot substitute for understanding why a child is absent or what would make education accessible.

Fines and prosecution can have serious consequences for families. Social-care involvement may also be appropriate where genuine welfare concerns exist, but it should not be used as a substitute for educational support or as an automatic response to a difficult attendance pattern.

College, university and the cost of opportunity

Higher education has genuine value: knowledge, research, professional development, confidence and the ability to contribute to society. The question is how that value is funded, who carries the risk and what responsibility institutions have towards the people they encourage to enrol.

The change in tuition fees

The increase from £3,000 to £9,000 in 2012 represented a tripling of the headline annual fee cap. The current maximum varies according to provider status and conditions, so the figures above are not a universal charge at every institution.

Tuition fees are not the whole cost

Students may also need maintenance loans to cover accommodation, food, transport, books, equipment and everyday living. The total amount borrowed can therefore be substantially higher than the tuition fee alone.

For many students, the loan system makes university possible without paying the full cost upfront. But it also means that the individual carries a financial obligation after leaving education. Repayments are income-contingent and depend on the repayment plan, earnings and applicable thresholds. They are not ordinary commercial loan repayments, but they can still affect disposable income for years. The balance and write-off rules also vary by plan.

The qualification-to-employment question

A degree does not guarantee a job. A person can invest years of effort, take on tuition and maintenance borrowing, graduate and still struggle to find work in their chosen field.

This is not an argument that every course must guarantee a job or that education has value only when it increases earnings. It is an argument for transparency and responsibility. Prospective students should be able to understand the likely costs, course outcomes, employment patterns and financial implications before committing themselves.

If society encourages someone to invest years and thousands of pounds in education, what responsibility does it have to ensure that the qualification offers meaningful opportunities?

Why is the individual expected to carry the financial consequences of an educational investment that does not necessarily lead to work?

Education as a lifelong public resource

The alternative is not to remove personal responsibility or dismiss the value of qualifications. It is to create more ways for people to learn without making every stage dependent on a large financial commitment or a single institutional route.

Education should remain available throughout life. It should not be treated as a one-time purchase made by a young person and then left entirely to them to recover financially.

Are we educating people to increase their capacity to participate in society, or making participation dependent on accepting financial obligations before they have had a fair chance to establish themselves?

Does the process serve the purpose?

Every administrative requirement should be able to explain what it achieves, who benefits, who carries the cost and whether a simpler route exists.

If a family has completed every requested administrative step but the child still cannot access education, what exactly has the system achieved?

Turn the argument into practical change

Reform should be testable, costed and open to evaluation. The aim is not to add another layer of bureaucracy. It is to redirect effort towards provision that makes a measurable difference.

Proposed reforms

• Provide integrated online learning portals as part of ordinary school infrastructure.
• Keep curriculum responsibility and teacher support with the school.
• Recognise meaningful educational participation across classroom, online and hybrid pathways.
• Avoid routine or blanket demands for paid medical evidence.
• Provide dignified reintegration and protection against victimisation.
• Review the administrative costs placed on families and health professionals.
• Examine how funding can support education delivered through different pathways.
• Improve transparency around higher education costs, outcomes and student financial commitments.
• Expand flexible, modular and work-based routes into further learning.

A possible school pilot

1. Map existing attendance, remote-learning and support arrangements.
2. Consult pupils and families about the barriers they experience.
3. Build or adapt a secure learning portal using the existing curriculum.
4. Set out how pupils receive teacher contact, feedback and assessment.
5. Test classroom, online and hybrid participation arrangements.
6. Review learning continuity, pupil experience and family burden.
7. Publish findings, including costs, limitations and improvements needed.

Measures that matter

• Pupils can access meaningful curriculum work when absent.
• Teachers can communicate and provide feedback.
• Progress continues across different learning pathways.
• Parents are not expected to become substitute teachers.
• Digital access barriers are identified and addressed.
• Pupils report being treated with dignity.
• Unnecessary evidence requests and administrative burdens are reduced.
• Resources are assessed against educational outcomes, not paperwork completed.

Sources and figures to check

This workbook combines personal experience, questions about institutional design and proposed reforms. The sources below help distinguish established policy and statistics from the arguments being developed.

What should education be for?

A register can tell us who was present. An attendance percentage can tell us how often pupils entered a building. A medical letter can document a particular circumstance. A loan balance can tell us how much money remains outstanding.

None of these measures, by itself, tells us whether a person has received meaningful education, whether a family has been treated fairly or whether the investment made in learning has created a genuine opportunity.

We should be able to question why families sometimes spend money proving that a child is unwell while the educational alternative remains unavailable. We should examine why so much effort can go into attendance administration while the infrastructure for continuous learning remains limited.

We should also ask why people can be encouraged to take on substantial financial commitments for higher education without a clear understanding of the outcomes they can reasonably expect.

These are not arguments against schools, teachers, doctors, universities or education itself. They are questions about whether the structures surrounding education are serving the people they exist to support.

Education should remain connected to the learner through illness, disability, disruption, changing circumstances and different stages of life. A different route to the same educational entitlement is not a lower standard. It removes an unnecessary barrier.