I entirely agree with the noble Lord that behaviour management is key, which is why I am surprised that it is not focused on in many qualifications for teaching. That is why we have appointed a behaviour tsar, Tom Bennett, to look at this and why we will ensure that behaviour management is focused on, because you cannot teach if you cannot control your class. I should point out that, according to the latest statistics, 9,900 teachers working in academies and more than 10,000 teachers working in maintained schools do not hold qualified teacher status.
We trust heads to make decisions about getting the best possible teachers to teach in their schools. The funding agreements of many academies give trusts the freedom to employ teachers without reference to standard qualified teacher status. This allows head teachers to exercise their autonomy to bring in appropriately qualified or otherwise eligible people from a range of different backgrounds to enrich the teaching offer available to pupils. Of course, head teachers are held to account for the quality of teaching in their schools through the Ofsted inspection regime, as my noble friend Lady Perry said, and the regular publication of school performance data. As such, I do not think that it is necessary to place a further requirement on Ofsted to report on the required qualifications for teachers.
Amendment 32, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, seeks to require Ofsted to report on the level of pupil absence over three years in a failing or coasting school before it becomes an academy and on the levels of absence in other schools already part of the trust taking that school on. Noble Lords are right to highlight the importance of pupil absence. We, too, take attendance very seriously. There is clear evidence that absence from school is linked to lower levels of attainment. Pupils with no absence during key stage 2 are over four and a half times more likely to reach level 5 or above at the end of primary school than pupils who missed 15% to 20% of the sessions, and twice as likely to do so than pupils who have missed 5% to 10%. The outcomes at secondary level are similar: pupils with no absence across key stage 4 are nearly three times more likely to achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths, and around 10 times more likely to achieve the English baccalaureate than pupils missing 15% to 20% of school across key stage 4; for pupils missing 5% to 10%, the figures are 1.4 times and 2.5 times.
That is why we are supporting schools and local authorities to keep absences to a minimum and to develop measures to support and promote good attendance. We do not want children missing their education. That is why we changed the law to tackle the culture of taking holidays during term time. In 2013-14, the latest academic year for which figures are available, overall absence across state-funded primary, secondary and special schools fell to 4.5% from 5.3% the previous academic year, with persistent absence falling from 4.6% to 3.6%. Data on the level of pupil absence are already collected and published annually for all schools as part of the performance tables. Requiring Ofsted to report separately on this would merely duplicate what is already available.
As the noble Lord said, even if these amendments were necessary, which I do not agree they are, Ofsted has a great deal to do and, at the moment, is going through a major restructuring as it brings inspections in house. In my view, these new clauses are all unnecessary and would simply introduce additional bureaucratic processes for Ofsted that would delay regional schools commissioners from making decisions and trusts from beginning to bring about the much-needed swift improvements in the schools concerned. I therefore urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.