MORE than 800 school children in Oxfordshire have dropped off the radar according to a new report.

The Centre for Social Justice, a right leaning thinktank published a report, ‘Lost but not forgotten: the reality of severe absence in schools post-lockdown’.

The thinktank say nearly 100,000 kids have almost entirely disappeared from education since the start of the pandemic.

The figures are from August 2020, with warnings the issue will only have got worse.

The Oxfordshire rate is below the national average at 886 children, but it is the equivalent of almost an entire secondary school missing.

Mrs Lynn Knapp headteacher at Windmill Primary School in Headington spoke to BBC Radio Oxford.

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She said: “We haven’t lost children from our school, because we made a huge effort to make sure we didn’t. In lockdown we had meeting after meeting with different people to check with every child in our school, so we knew where they were and that they were engaging in some way with our learning.”

Mrs Knapp explained some families were scared about Covid and were worried about sending their child to school.

Mrs Knapp said she was surprised at the number of children in Oxfordshire not at school.

She added: “I think some of those children have been home educated which is a real concern for us because you can just choose and opt to have your child home educated.”

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