Councillors have welcomed high attendance rates at schools in Barnet following the disruption caused by the coronavirus lockdown.

Overall school attendance in the borough was 94.6% after pupils returned to classrooms in March – above the national average of 90%.

Most children were unable to attend schools from 5th January as part of a national lockdown designed to stop the spread of Covid-19. Face-to-face lessons for all pupils finally resumed on 8th March.

The Department for Education figures, which were for 25th March, were presented in a report to the children, education and safeguarding committee last week.

Speaking during the meeting, Chris Munday, the council’s director of children and young people, said: “We are very pleased with our figures in terms of attendance at school. They are good results overall.”

The council launched a campaign last year to help families and teachers support children’s mental health as they returned to school following lockdowns.

Schools have carried out comprehensive risk assessments and drawn up plans to allow social distancing and minimise the risk of infection.

But with attendance for children with special educational needs at 82.3% in Barnet, Chris said the council needed to do more to encourage them to return to school and had developed programmes to do so.

Conservative councillor Felix Byers said it was encouraging to see school attendance in the borough so high and asked why Barnet had “done so well at getting our kids back to school”.

Ian Harrison, the council’s education and skills director, said the borough had always seen higher attendance rates than most of the rest of the country.

“I think schools have worked really, really well with children and families through remote learning and so on, keeping them engaged – and it is that keeping them engaged, keeping them learning, that has meant so many of them were keen to get back,” he added.

“I think it is just a sign of the good work schools have done in terms of keeping children motivated and keeping parents engaged with getting children to learn.”

Labour councillor Anne Hutton said she thought the borough had done really well engaging with schools over the past year. “I think a lot of hard work went into that,” she added.

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