Labour<\/a> councillor Jayne Watkins asked how many cases of missing children the department had dealt with. Andy Rothwell, the council\u2019s head of learning and achievement, replied: \u201cThose cases not too many, last year five in total that we explored and shut down.<\/p>\n“There were two cases in America. It was discovered they\u2019d moved to America and we were happy the local authority in America had eyes on those children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Rothwell said the department works with the council\u2019s benefits team, police and the HMRC tax authority to find where a child is if necessary and then a case can be \u201cshut down.”<\/p>\n
The meeting heard a school-to-school tracking system is also used and names are discussed at education panel meetings, meaning some children can be identified before the ‘missing in education’ procedures are required.<\/p>\n
Mr Rothwell promised to share the procedures with Ms Watkins after she asked what was meant by the report stating that missing children are identified \u201cquickly\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the procedures set out what schools need to do and the necessary timeframe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The surprising discovery was made in one part of Wales during discussions about children missing in education 13:35,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[42720,42721,528,10008,42722,42718,49,978,659,42719],"class_list":{"0":"post-90107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-fairwater","9":"tag-gwent","10":"tag-labour-party","11":"tag-missing-people","12":"tag-torfaen","13":"tag-torfaen-council","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-usa","17":"tag-welsh-labour"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114483686496366224","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Stock](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2_Two-girls-waiting-behind-their-friends-to-get-off-school-bus.jpg\")
Two children \u201cmissing\u201d from a Welsh school turned up in America, councillors have been told(Image: Getty Images\/iStockphoto)<\/p>\n