The UK government has become rather obsessed with attendance levels. It's one of the things schools are scored on in government ratings. They don't really look

The UK government has become rather obsessed with attendance levels. It's one of the things schools are scored on in government ratings. They don't really look at why kids are off school, just that they are. A child that falls into a coma is counted the same as the child of a negligent parent that doesn't care or even know whether their child goes to school. This then gets fed into these sorts of studies that are used to blame various things. Rightly or wrongly, one of the things being blamed is ongoing teacher strikes. It's seen as very hypocritical for teachers to say that a parent taking a child out of school for a day is bad, but that it's also OK for the school to have to close due to strikes.