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<p>The Department for Education does not collect data on children missing education.
Section 436A of the Education Act 1996 places a duty on local authorities to have
arrangements that enable them to establish the identities of children in their area
who are not registered pupils at a school, and are not receiving suitable education
through a means other than at a school. Local authorities may decide as part of this
duty to collect information on children who may be missing education or at risk of
doing so. The Department's statutory guidance to local authorities advises that they
must have robust procedures in place to fulfil their legal duty.</p><p>The 'lost pupils
database' (LPD) records the transfer records of pupils whose correct destination is
not known. Files are retained whenever a child leaves a school for a destination outside
the maintained school sector. Examples of these destinations include ‘gone to an independent
school', ‘gone sick', ‘moved abroad with parents' or 'moved on without reason'.</p><p>The
LPD is not used by Children Missing Education (CME) officers to record CME data. The
primary function of the Department's School to School (S2S) secure data transfer website
is to provide schools and Local Authorities (LAs) with a mechanism for the secure
and ongoing transfer of thousands of statutory child-level data files per week to
new schools/LAs when children move school.<br><br>The details required for the Lost
Pupil Database are:</p><p>File Name<br>Source school<br>Source LA<br>UPN<br>Surname<br>Forename<br>DOB<br>Gender<br>Former
UPN<br>Former Surname<br>Middle Names<br>Ethnicity<br>FSM eligibility<br>In Care<br>Care
Authority<br>SEN status<br>Start Date<br>Postcode<br>Sessions Possible<br>Sessions
Attended<br>Sessions Unauthorised<br>First Language</p><p>LPD records are stored for
a minimum of 12 months. The last ‘clear down' took place in October 2013 which means
monthly additions are only held back to October 2012. At 1 February 2014, 15,128 records
were held on the system. Records are not removed from the system until the general
‘clear down', so the figure does not represent pupils missing from education at any
given time.</p>
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