Children missing education

Who counts as children missing education?

Children missing education, usually shortened to CME, meet both parts of the definition: they are not registered pupils at a school, and they are not receiving suitable education elsewhere. Section 436A of the Education Act 1996 requires local authorities to make arrangements to identify, so far as possible, children of compulsory school age in their area who meet those conditions.

Suitable education means efficient, full-time education suited to the child's age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs. The definition therefore asks about the education a child is receiving, not simply whether their name appears on a school list. A known address does not establish that education is in place; an unconfirmed address does not, by itself, answer the education question.

The Department for Education's Children missing education statutory guidance applies in England. It is statutory for local authorities and for academy trusts, governing bodies, management committees and proprietors. They must have regard to it; the guidance says they should be able to demonstrate that they considered it and have reasonable grounds where they do not follow it.

The guidance includes children applying for a school place, children offered a future place who have not yet started, children whose elective home education has been assessed as unsuitable, and children recorded as CME for an extended period, for example where their whereabouts is unclear or unknown. Read those examples with the definition: the concern is a child without suitable education now. An offer for next term does not explain what education is being received this term.

CME, school absence and home education are different routes

The guidance's definition and exclusions make three distinctions particularly important for school staff. They prevent a useful referral system becoming a catch-all label for every attendance difficulty.

• A registered pupil who is absent is not CME under this definition. That remains true where absence is persistent or severe. The school still needs to address attendance, establish whereabouts when absence is unexplained and act on safeguarding concerns.
• A child receiving suitable education otherwise than at school is not CME. Suitable elective home education or alternative provision can meet the education requirement. Home education is not itself evidence of a problem.
• Unassessed home education is not the same as unsuitable home education. The guidance excludes home-educated children where the local authority has not yet had an opportunity to assess suitability. It separately includes home education assessed as unsuitable. It adds that home-educated children not known to the local authority, or whose parents have not responded to its enquiries, could be at risk of being CME.

For example, a pupil who remains registered but has stopped attending needs an attendance response, any necessary safeguarding action and, if enquiries give reasonable grounds to believe the child will no longer attend, a CME referral. A child between schools with no suitable education in place fits a different problem. A home-educated child receiving suitable education does not become CME because the education takes place outside a classroom. These are illustrative examples, not decisions about an individual child.

Keep the distinction visible in the case note: registration status, what is known about education provision, and what remains unconfirmed. A useful note says where each piece of information came from. It does not turn a parent's stated plan, a future admission date or an unanswered telephone call into a confirmed fact. For the attendance register itself, use the separate school attendance register guide.

Who acts, and when should enquiries begin?

Schools should immediately make enquiries when a pupil on their roll is absent and the absence is unexplained. The conducting enquiries section says arrangements should cover all unexpected and unexplained absences promptly. There is no general ten-day waiting period before asking where a child is.

If those enquiries give the school reasonable grounds to believe the child will no longer attend, and the parent has not provided written notice of another school or education otherwise than at school, the guidance says the school should refer to the child's home local-authority CME team as soon as possible. Referral does not end the school's work: reasonable enquiries and regular communication should continue until both parties agree they have concluded, or there is nothing further the school can do.

Where there is reason to believe a child is in immediate danger or at risk of harm, the guidance calls for a referral to children's social care and the police if appropriate. Follow the school's child protection policy and involve the designated safeguarding lead. A CME form is not a substitute for the safeguarding route. Missing suitable education can be a possible indicator of neglect, abuse or exploitation, and in severe and sustained cases could itself constitute neglect. The response should take account of the child's actual circumstances. The children at risk of harm section also says an early help assessment is not a prerequisite for a referral to children's social care.

Local authorities should have a named person and enquiry or referral point, written procedures, an active list of suspected and confirmed CME, and a policy setting referral response expectations. The effective processes section does not set one national response time for every referral. Check the published local procedure and record when a response is expected.

If the child lives in a different local-authority area from the school, identify the home authority and establish who is doing what. The guidance expects cooperation between the authorities. A practical handover names the receiving officer or team, the information sent and the unresolved action; a forwarded email alone does not show that the next enquiry has an owner.

Reasonable enquiries: keep the action and its outcome together

Reasonable enquiries should establish, as far as reasonably possible, a child's location, circumstances and education provision. The joint enquiries guidance expects schools and local authorities to agree responsibilities and make enquiries proportionate to the circumstances and risk. The guidance says they should jointly conduct reasonable enquiries immediately upon identifying a CME. It is not a requirement to complete the same list mechanically in every case.

The guidance's possible enquiries include contacting parents using known details, checking with agencies already involved, contacting a previous or possible receiving school, and checking with the local authority where the child lives. Home visits are for the appropriate team and should follow local risk-assessment guidance. Select and sequence enquiries according to the case, rather than treating every possible contact as automatically appropriate. The local information-sharing guidance also includes independent schools and links with health professionals, housing agencies and voluntary services. Other local authorities and agencies may learn that a child has arrived in an area before the local authority does. Local arrangements should make the referral route clear and identify which service can answer the outstanding question.

The following is a suggested working record, not a prescribed national form. Use it within the school's or authority's existing case system and access arrangements:

• Known position: registration status, last confirmed attendance or education provision, known contact details and the source and date of each fact.
• Enquiry: who took the action, when, who or which service was contacted, and what was asked.
• Outcome: what was established, what was reported but remains unconfirmed, and any documents or messages supporting the account.
• Decision: the concern considered, the reason for a referral or other action, and who made or agreed the decision.
• Next step: the responsible person, expected response or review date, and the route to escalate an unanswered enquiry.

Distinguish 'contact attempted' from 'contact made', and 'place offered' from 'education started'. Those short distinctions make the record useful to a colleague covering an absence. If an enquiry changes the picture, keep the earlier account and add the update with its date and source, rather than leaving the case looking as though the answer was always known.

The guidance expressly expects local authorities to record the steps taken to identify and support each CME. Its cross-authority working section says that where a child has not been located through work with other authorities, the authority should not remove the child from its CME list before exhausting other reasonable enquiries. A record of the child's details should be maintained elsewhere until the child is located or reaches school-leaving age. That specific instruction is not a general retention period for every school record.

Removing a pupil from the admission register

Deletion from the admission register is a separate legal decision. Regulation 9 of the School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024 sets the grounds. The school must establish that every requirement of the relevant ground is met. The CME guidance on removing names says deletion must then take place immediately and cannot be retrospective.

Two grounds can be reduced to a day count, losing the conditions that make the decision lawful:

• Ground H, regulation 9(1)(h): a pupil given leave has not attended within the ten school days immediately after the leave ends. This is only one condition: the regulation also addresses sickness or unavoidable cause and joint reasonable efforts by the school and local authority to establish location and circumstances.
• Ground I, regulation 9(1)(i): a pupil has been continuously absent for at least twenty school days. Further conditions include the attendance-code circumstances specified in the regulation, sickness or unavoidable cause, and joint reasonable efforts. The elapsed period alone is not enough.

Both grounds distinguish between enquiries that fail to establish location and circumstances, and enquiries that succeed. Where they succeed, the school and local authority must agree there are no reasonable grounds to believe the pupil will attend again, taking account of reasonable steps they could take to secure attendance. The Department's Working together to improve school attendance guidance says this condition will be met very rarely, and that neither ground can be used where the pupil could reasonably be supported to return, is absent for a health reason, or where attendance legal action could reasonably be taken instead. Read the complete ground before deciding. Ten or twenty school days must not be silently converted into calendar days.

A family's move usually points to a different ground. Under regulation 9(1)(g), where the pupil no longer normally lives a reasonable distance from the school, the school has no reasonable grounds to believe the pupil will attend again and the pupil is not a boarder, the name must be deleted even when a new school place has not yet been secured. Deletion on this ground says nothing about whether education is in place.

Elective home education has its own ground in regulation 9(1)(f): written parental notification that the child will stop attending after a specified day and receive education otherwise than at school, that day having passed, and no school attendance order naming the school in force. For a compulsory-school-age pupil placed at a special school by a local authority, regulation 9(2) adds restrictions. Do not apply the ordinary home-education withdrawal route without checking those restrictions. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 will add local-authority consent for withdrawing certain children to home education, registers of children not in school and a new school attendance order process. At November 2026 those provisions are in force only for making regulations, so check the current commencement position before relying on this section.

Regulation 13(4) requires a deletion return to the local authority, stating the regulation 9 ground, other than for pupils leaving the most senior class at the end of the school year unless the authority has asked for those returns. For each deletion decision, a useful record identifies the exact ground, the evidence for its conditions, the decision date and the return made. Do not describe that record as proof that a child has suitable education elsewhere unless the enquiries actually established it.

When the update has not reached the case record

A colleague receives a message that a family has moved. Another hears that a place has been offered. The case record still says 'awaiting response'. This is an illustrative coordination problem: information may exist without the person responsible for the next action being able to find it. The first job is to move relevant information into the authorised case record with its source, date and limits.

ComplyChat is a messaging option for work conversations that an organisation needs to keep. As described on how it works, on a connected paid plan conversations are kept in the organisation's own Microsoft 365 subscription under its retention schedules. Free does not include a Microsoft 365 archive. Keeping a conversation does not determine whether a child is CME, make a safeguarding referral or establish that the legal conditions for register deletion are met.

Before changing a messaging arrangement, ask the attendance lead and safeguarding lead one practical question: if the person who received an important update is away tomorrow, can the colleague continuing the enquiry find the update, its source and the action agreed?

Questions people ask and official further reading

Is a persistently absent pupil a child missing education?

Not under the CME definition while the pupil remains registered at a school. Attendance and safeguarding action can still be urgent. The pupil is not CME while registered, but a school should still refer to the CME team if enquiries give it reasonable grounds to believe the child will no longer attend and the parent has not given written notice of other education.

Are all home-educated children classed as CME?

No. Suitable home education is excluded, as is home education the local authority has not yet had an opportunity to assess. The guidance includes home education that has been assessed as unsuitable, and adds that home-educated children not known to the local authority, or whose parents have not responded to its enquiries, could be at risk of being CME.

Should a school wait ten days before making a CME enquiry?

No. Unexplained absence should prompt immediate enquiries. Ten school days appears in the 2024 Regulations in two other places: as one condition of the deletion ground after leave of absence, and in the attendance return to the local authority for continuous absence recorded only under codes G, N, O or U. Neither is a waiting period before enquiries or a CME referral.

Does a CME referral end the school's responsibility for enquiries?

No. The guidance expects continuing school enquiries and regular communication with the local authority until enquiries have mutually concluded or there are no further actions the school can take.

Read the DfE statutory guidance for local authorities and schools for the full process, Education Act 1996 section 436A for the identification duty and suitable-education definition, and the 2024 Regulations, regulation 9 for the complete deletion grounds, with the Department's Working together to improve school attendance guidance for more on each ground. Use the current local-authority CME procedure for referral details and locally agreed response expectations.

This guide covers England and is a practical explanation, not an individual case determination. At the next case review, choose one open enquiry and check that the record shows the known education position, the unanswered question, the person responsible and the next review date.