The actor Anna Maxwell Martin, best known for TV shows including Motherland, Line of Duty and Ludwig, has called for more compassion for families struggling with school refusal, and a scrapping of fines for non-attendance.
A single mother of two teenage daughters, she has previously spoken out about the challenges she has experienced navigating the special educational needs system in England’s schools, describing the process as “impossible” and “brutalising”.
This week, she called for an end to “cruel and idiotic” fines for parents whose children struggle to attend and a ban on “shameful” school exclusions.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian during a break in filming in Lithuania, Maxwell Martin said she had personal experience of dealing with school refusal and described how broken she had felt after some school meetings.
Calling for a more compassionate approach to children struggling to attend, she said: “Children will learn when they want to learn, but if you keep penalising them, and their parents who are doing their best, we’re not going to get anywhere. I feel passionately about it because I’ve had personal experience.”
Maxwell Martin, whose estranged husband, the director Roger Michell – father to her daughters – died suddenly in 2021, was speaking in support of a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the Difference education charity, published earlier this week.
The award-winning actor was one of dozens of parents, teachers, school leaders, students and charities to give evidence to the report, which explores the problem of “lost learning” and outlines a plan to curb the rise in absence and exclusions and address the crisis in special needs provision.
It says exclusions went up by more than a third in a single year, home education increased by 20% between 2022-23 and 2023-24, and there had been a 140% increase in the highest level of special educational needs support since 2015.
Persistent absence – where a child misses 10% or more of school sessions – remains a huge concern for the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, who has backed the continuing use of fines, which recently went up from £60 to £80. Official statistics published on Thursday showed one in five pupils in England were persistently absent in 2023-24, marginally down on the previous year but almost double the rates before the pandemic.
“I think we need to look hard at how we make things better for children in schools. I think it needs to be a holistic approach, and certainly an inclusive approach,” said Maxwell Martin, who stressed she did not blame teachers or school leaders, but the system they worked within.
“We know that excluding kids gets us nowhere as a society. It certainly doesn’t help kids, especially vulnerable kids. They need to be included in school and kept in school. Because the stats around those kids once they’re excluded are really dire, and it’s shameful for us as a society that we support that.”
On non-attendance fines and threats of prosecution, Maxwell Martin said: “Those hundreds of thousands of kids who struggle to attend are dealing with a real jigsaw of difficulty, as is that family trying to support that child.
“And threatening that family – especially if you think it’s a single mum or a single dad really struggling financially – and you threaten them with a fine, it’s catastrophic and it won’t bring about change.”
Children’s absence was less about families going off on skiing holidays, and more to do with issues such as poverty, neurodiversity and anxiety. “I’m telling you right now they’re not skiing,” said Maxwell Martin.
“We know we have all these issues. There’s no point now banging on about behaviour and behaviour tsars. You can’t teach children to behave better by making them feel shit. It doesn’t work. We need to meet their needs. We need to make them feel they have worth.”
The actor said compassion was “leaching” out of schools. “When I think about kids in crisis it really upsets me. And when I think about some of the meetings I’ve been in schools, and I come out and how broken I am and how broken my child then is because it’s harder to support her.
“I’m not here for my story,” she added. “I have a massive amount of privilege. I’m here because it bothers me when people have many fewer choices than I have. I want those people to feel supported and I want those children to feel valued in school.”
Maxwell Martin said she would have expected a Labour government “to understand that fining vulnerable parents is cruel and idiotic, and they don’t. How’s that going to help that mum? She walks out of that meeting and she’s told there’s going to be court action from Monday if her kid’s not in.”
“How’s she supposed to get them into school? Shall we think of a different way around that problem? Because that’s not the way to solve it. To me, that’s dumb.”
Kiran Gill, an associate fellow at IPPR and the founder and CEO of the Difference, said: “Our education system is failing the children who need it most. Despite school leaders’ efforts, the system works against them. The consequences – rising mental health issues, youth violence, and risks to national growth – should concern us all.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “This government inherited a school system with a wide range of baked-in inequalities, and it’s clear absence is having a detrimental impact on children’s learning and their future success.
“Our plan for change sets out our relentless focus on making sure every child gets the best life chances, including children with Send, which is why we are determined to improve inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools and restore parents’ trust that their child will get the right support.”
