Ofsted warning over 'untracked' children

Ofsted said children out of education and whose whereabouts were unknown risked failing academically and were vulnerable to harm.

That could be physical, emotional or psychological harm, Ofsted said.

Local authorities have a legal duty to ensure all children are in a safe environment and get a suitable education, either at school or home.

...

Ofsted said schools needed to talk to each other and local authorities more effectively to ensure children who were at risk received an education and were protected from mistreatment.

For its report, entitled "Children missing from education", Ofsted surveyed 15 local authorities of different sizes across England in urban and rural areas. ...

"It is of serious concern that some schools are not following agreed procedures and legal requirements for notifying their local authorities when pupils are excluded or taken off the roll."

However, he added that the report did highlight some of the good work local authorities had done to "overcome the challenges in ensuring all the children living in their area are identified and are receiving a suitable education".

Database closure

The death of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq, in 2008, was a high-profile case of a child suffering from neglect after falling out of the education system.

She died five months after her mother had withdrawn her from school.

The severely malnourished child weighed just 2st 9lb (16.5kg) - when paramedics found her emaciated at her home in Handsworth, Birmingham.

Earlier this month ContactPoint, a £235m government database containing the records of England's 11 million children, was switched off.

The database was established in the wake of the Victoria Climbie child abuse case to aid child protection and its demise sparked concerns that there is no system of collating key information in one place.

The system was used by doctors, social workers, schools, charities and other individuals involved in the protection of children.

via BBC News - Ofsted warning over 'untracked' children.

Typical blind as a bat bureaucratic thinking.  No one asks why the kids might go missing in the first place. Fix the cause, don't take a hammer to the symptoms.