Robots could sit in the seats of absent children in school – to allow the pupils to access lessons from a “safe space”, a former children’s commissioner has said.

Anne Longfield, executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives, said that developing a “more inclusive” school environment could help tackle the attendance crisis – rather than a “one-size-fits-all” approach, in a new report.

It outlined the potential use of telepresence AV1 robots as one potential strategy.

It comes as she warned that threatening parents with “punitive” fines when their child misses school is not reducing absences.

A new report from the Centre for Young Lives thinktank and the Child of the North initiative said headteachers had found that strategies to tackle pupil absence prior to the COVID pandemic were no longer as effective.

It also said that early data from a pilot project in Wirral, Merseyside, found that telepresence robots could help tackle engagement and attendance issues.

The paper highlighted the AV1 telepresence robots, made by the company No Isolation, as one of the alternative programmes that could help.

The robots would sit in an absent child’s seat in class and allow them to access a lesson live while in a “safe space” elsewhere – whether still on-site at school, or at home.

Due to this, they helped boost attendance by as much as 21% and increase the number of hours pupils engaged with learning by 42%, the report said.

The report continued: “As part of their programme, Wirral Emotionally Based School Avoidance Strategy are using the AV1 device, a telepresence robot that enables children to access their education remotely.

“The robot sits in the young person’s seat in class, and they access a live stream of the lesson via an electronic tablet in a safe space (eg at home or an intervention room within school).”

Ms Longfield, a former children’s commissioner for England, added: “The reasons why children miss school are often complex and there is no silver bullet.

“However, the one-size-fits-all and often punitive approach that previous governments have taken to tackle absence needs to be consigned to the past.

“Simply, threatening parents with fines is not working for many families and not reducing severe absence rates.”

As part of a government drive to boost school attendance post-COVID, the fines parents face for taking their children out of school without permission have risen this year.

Absence fines have increased from £60 to £80 and a parent who receives a second fine for the same child in a three-year period will automatically receive a £160 fine.

Other actions, like a parenting order or prosecution, will be considered if a parent exceeds two fines per child within a three-year period.

Those prosecuted could receive a fine of up to £2,500.

Meanwhile, figures released last week suggested that the number of pupils in England missing at least half of possible school lessons has continued to tick upwards.

About 158,000 pupils were “severely absent” over the autumn and spring terms of 2023-24, compared to 139,000 over the same period in 2022-23, according to data from the Department for Education.

A UK-based safety watchdog that tackles online child abuse has warned it is “overwhelmingly” dealing with images taken by children themselves, usually after being groomed.

It comes as a Northern Ireland man, who exploited more than 70 children online, was given a life sentence with a minimum of 20 years in jail on Friday.

Catfish paedophile Alexander McCartney, 26, persuaded scores of children to send him images via social media, then used these to blackmail them into sending more graphic material.

McCartney, who posed as a teenage girl to befriend young females on Snapchat, admitted 185 charges, including the manslaughter of 12-year-old Cimarron Thomas, who took her own life in May 2018.

Unable to live with the loss of his daughter, her father Ben Thomas also died by suicide 18 months later.

“This is not a future issue for us. This is a very much a now issue,” Dan Sexton, chief technology officer of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), told Sky News.

“The internet has removed the barriers [to children for paedophiles]. Smartphones and generally camera-enabled web devices are in the hands of children which has made it much easier for people to access children, coerce children, groom children,” he said.

Last year, the watchdog dealt with more than 254,000 “self-generated” child abuse images, making up 92% of the images it tackled.

Mr Sexton said he is frustrated because this kind of child abuse should be more preventable.

“There are many more points of intervention to prevent it getting to that point, in a way that is much harder with contact abuse [where an abuser is physically making the images of the child].”

He wants better safeguards by companies running social media platforms, as well as better education for teachers, parents and children.

If you’re a worried parent

The IWF’s advice to worried parents is to remember the acronym TALK.

• T: Talk to your child about online sexual abuse and listen to their concerns
• A: Agree rules around the use of technology as a family
• L: Learn about the platforms and apps that your child uses
• K: Know how to use the privacy settings and tools within those apps to make sure they’re all set correctly for your child’s safety

If you’re under 18 and worried

“The power an extortionist has is that threat of sharing imagery, saying, ‘I’m going to share your images unless you give me more imagery or provide payment’,” according to Mr Sexton.

“One of the ways of addressing that is to take that power away.”

The IWF, NSPCC and Childline launched the Report Remove tool in 2021 which gives children in the UK the power to get abuse content removed.

Childline passes the report to the IWF which then works to get the image removed but also tagged on databases to make sure it can never be uploaded again.

“If we can do that, that takes that power away from the extortionist saying, ‘I’m going to share the imagery’. That child can know that that imagery cannot be shared because it’s been blocked,” said Mr Sexton.

What are tech platforms doing?

Nude images sent via direct message on Instagram will now be automatically blurred, and soon, users won’t be able to screenshot some images and videos sent via DM.

Meta has also restricted access and increased privacy for accounts of under-18s.

Apple is testing out a feature in Australia to allow children to report nude images and video being sent to them directly to the company, which could then report the messages to police.

Earlier this year, Snapchat added warnings on some messages if they come from someone reported or blocked by others.

Friend requests from users on the app without mutual connections and with a history linked to scamming activities will also be blocked.

:: Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.

An online predator who led an American girl and her father to take their own lives has been jailed for at least 20 years after the UK’s largest “catfishing” case.

Warning: This article contains references to suicide and child sex abuse which readers may find distressing.

Alexander McCartney, 26, previously admitted 185 charges, including the manslaughter of a girl who took her own life.

Police called him a “dangerous, relentless, cruel paedophile” who “may as well have pulled the trigger himself” and said there were about 3,500 victims.

Devices seized from his bedroom contained hundreds of thousands of indecent photographs and videos of underage girls.

Belfast Crown Court heard victims were aged between 10 and 16 and based in the UK, USA, continental Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

McCartney, from south Armagh in Northern Ireland, used Snapchat and other sites to pose as someone else online, known as catfishing.

He pretended to be a young girl to persuade his victims to send images. He then blackmailed them into sending more explicit material.

Cimarron Thomas, 12, from West Virginia, shot herself with her father’s gun instead of complying with his demands after he gave her an online countdown.

But there were more tragic repercussions.

Unable to live with the loss, her father Ben Thomas, a former US Army veteran, died by suicide 18 months later.

Former computer science student McCartney pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter, 59 of blackmail, and 70 of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

At his sentencing, the judge said his offending began at the age of 14.

‘Utterly remorseless’

McCartney admitted dozens of charges related to making and distribution of indecent images of children and appeared “utterly remorseless”, said barrister David McDowell KC.

The prosecution said he deliberately targeted victims who were either gay or exploring their sexuality and “degraded and humiliated them”.

The judge called the details “excruciating” and much of what he did is too graphic and disturbing to detail.

McCartney told one girl he would send people to rape her if she didn’t comply. In some instances, he demanded his victims involve younger siblings, or even family pets and objects.

One girl repeatedly said she would kill herself and that her mother was dying from cancer.

“I do not give a shit about you or your mum,” McCartney replied.

Girl shot herself after McCartney countdown

In May 2018 and posing as ‘Sarah’, he messaged Cimarron Thomas at her family’s farmhouse in the tiny US village of Bruceton and persuaded her to send a topless photograph.

When McCartney revealed he wasn’t Sarah, he demanded more explicit pictures and threatened to send them to her father.

When she pleaded for him to stop, he told her to “dry her eyes” and involve her nine-year-old sister in sexually explicit material via webcam.

Belfast Crown Court heard that a police officer who reviewed the material said Cimarron was “utterly distraught and sobbing”.

The court also heard McCartney “counted down” online from 20 to zero as he insisted on more pictures.

Cimarron refused and shot herself.

McCartney’s cynical last message read: “Goodbye and good luck.”

Father couldn’t forgive himself

Cimarron’s younger sister heard what she thought was a balloon popping but found her lying on her parents’ bedroom floor. She died in hospital later that night.

Her father Ben couldn’t forgive himself for leaving his handgun within reach and took his own life 18 months later.

A statement read in court from his wife, Stephanie, said he felt guilty about his daughter’s death and “lost interest in life”.

Cimarron’s family couldn’t understand why she killed herself until three years later when police found the online chat on McCartney’s computer.

Read more from Sky News:
Nazi-obsessed man guilty of trying to kill asylum seeker
Catfish victim on taking her pain to the screen

In a statement, Cimarron’s grandparents said: “We all have been devastated by our granddaughter’s passing.

“We know that nothing that we do or say will bring her back. But if we can help another family to not have to go through what we did, something good could come out of her death.

“Parents, please keep the doors of communication open concerning the evil of some people online.”

Detective Chief Superintendent Eamonn Corrigan, from the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said McCartney’s sentence was a “warning to those operating online and hiding behind fake accounts and firewalls – you will be caught and you will face the full force of the law when you are”.

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.

The Kremlin has denied a Wall Street Journal report that Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin have been in regular contact over the last two years.

The world’s richest man has repeatedly been in touch with the Russian president, according to the US outlet, citing several current and former US, European and Russian officials.

They added that the discussions touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.

It comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues and the US election approaches next month.

However, the Kremlin and Mr Musk both denied the report.

On Friday, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “No, this is not true.”

He said that the pair had had one contact and that was before 2022.

Mr Musk himself previously said on his own social media site that they had spoken around April 2021.

However, the new report says that more conversations followed this.

Mr Musk denied the report in a tweet, claiming The Wall Story Journal was biased.

The WSJ report claimed that, amid the conversations, Mr Putin asked Mr Musk not to activate his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favour to Chinese leader Xi Jinping – citing two people briefed on the request.

It added that knowledge of Mr Musk’s alleged connections with Mr Putin was a guarded secret with several officials in the White House reportedly not aware of it.

The report also claimed that Mr Musk spoke to high-ranking Russian officials too. It named one as Sergei Kiriyenko, Mr Putin’s first deputy chief of staff – citing two officials.

‘Hold strong Ukraine’

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mr Musk came out in support of Kyiv – tweeting “hold strong Ukraine”.

He also donated Starlink terminals providing free internet access to much of the country under attack from Russia.

But last year, Mr Musk said he refused a Ukrainian request to activate his satellite network during an attempted attack on Russian ships.

Russia’s now-former space chief Dmitry Rogozin has threatened Mr Musk over his support for Ukraine and has repeatedly shared messages about him, and Starlink, on his Telegram channel.

Mr Musk operates SpaceX, which runs the Starlink service, and is the primary rocket launcher for the Pentagon and NASA.

He has campaigned for Donald Trump, and given sizeable donations to his election efforts.

Sky’s US partner network NBC News has approached Mr Musk for comment.

An astronaut was taken to hospital shortly after returning to Earth from an extended mission on the International Space Station.

The astronaut, who NASA did not name for privacy reasons, is suffering from an undisclosed medical issue.

NASA initially said the entire crew was flown to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola hospital out of precaution, but did not specify whether all or some of the crew had been experiencing issues.

The other three crew members have left the hospital and returned to Houston, the space agency said.

NASA said: “The one astronaut who remains at Ascension is in stable condition under observation as a precautionary measure.”

Astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin splashed down in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft at 3.29am local time on Friday (8.29am UK time) off Florida’s Gulf Coast.

NASA, which is usually tight-lipped on medical issues involving astronauts, declined to say what prompted the abundance of caution or describe the crew’s condition.

Russia’s space agency has not responded to a request for comment on Mr Grebenkin’s condition.

SpaceX has a fleet of reusable spacecraft and has flown to the ISS 44 times.

The Elon Musk-owned company remains the only US option for NASA astronaut trips to and from the space station. Boeing’s Starliner, intended as a second US ride, has been hindered by years of development issues.

The crew should have been back on Earth two months ago but their homecoming was stalled by problems with the Starliner astronaut capsule, which returned empty in September because of safety concerns.

Hurricane Milton then interfered, followed by a further two weeks of high wind and rough seas.

Marking 235 days in space, the Crew-8 astronauts’ stay aboard the ISS, a football field-sized science lab 250 miles in orbit, was longer than the typical six-month astronaut missions on the station.

It also marked the longest mission so far for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft since its introduction in 2020.

Following the series of delays, the Crew Dragon spacecraft safely undocked from the ISS on Wednesday and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere early on Friday morning, deploying parachutes before dropping into the Gulf of Mexico.

At a post-splashdown news briefing, a NASA official said “the crew is doing great” and made no mention of any issues with the astronauts, but noted two hitches with Crew Dragon’s parachute deployment.

Richard Jones, deputy manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Programme, said Crew Dragon’s initial set of braking parachutes suffered some “debris strikes” and that one of four parachutes in a subsequent set took longer than expected to unfurl.

Neither event affected crew safety, Mr Jones said, calling the splashdown weather “ideal” for the crew’s recovery.

Amid the hum of cooling fans and squelch of vacuum pumps, a new home for 12 quantum computers has opened in Oxfordshire, as part of a bid to put the UK ahead in a global race to harness the technology.

Quantum computers promise to solve problems too hard for even the most powerful supercomputers – like those requiring vast numbers of parallel computations like complex weather simulations, the binding of drugs to their targets, or the vagaries of financial markets.

While prototypes have proven that the weird world of quantum matter can be used to perform calculations – none are yet large or stable enough to be of much use.

“With its focus on making quantum computers practically useable at scale, this centre will help them solve some of the biggest challenges we face,” said science minister Lord Vallance.

Quantum computers exploit the strangeness of quantum physics to replace the “bits” – zeros and ones – that encode information in classical computers with something fundamentally different.

If manipulated in the right way, matter can be coaxed into quantum bits – or qubits – that can be both a zero and a one at the same time.

This power, and the fact qubits can become “entangled,” or interact with each other means a relatively small number of qubits can perform more calculations in parallel than a classical computer chip ever could.

However, even the slightest interference from the outside world can destroy a fragile qubit, so building groups of them large enough that last long enough to make a reliable computer is a major challenge.

The new National Quantum Computing Centre at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Harwell is designed to accelerate that research.

The 4,000-square-metre facility is designed to host multiple competing designs of quantum computer and around a hundred scientists working on them.

Some commercial, others developed by university teams – to try to solve hardware and software problems in parallel.

“The UK National Quantum Computing Centre is central to this critical work, bringing together internationally leading researchers and technologists from across academia and industry to ensure that the UK’s quantum computing ecosystem thrives,” said Prof Dame Ottoline Leyser, chief executive of UK Research and Innovation that is funding the centre.

Competition is fierce. Big tech firms like Google, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon are all investing in quantum technology. So too are other states, led by China, which directs more government funding into the field than anyone else.

The potential for quantum computers to crack the encryption tools used to keep most online traffic secure gave rise to the term “Q-day” – when the first machine emerges with the capability to decrypt the internet.

It’s still some way off, but helps explain why governments are interested in betting big on a technology that promises much, but has so far delivered little.