Should schools and local authorities be required to follow this new statutory guidance to improve school attendance?

The clearest fault line in this vote about school attendance rules wasn't generational but domestic: men endorsed the new statutory guidance by better than two to one, while women — often the ones dealing directly with schools over registers, meetings and welfare referrals — voted narrowly against it. That gap did more to shape the 28-17 result than anything else in the data.

Age told a messier story. The 25-34s and pensioners were the guidance's strongest backers, both comfortably in favour, while the 45-54 bracket was the only age group to reject it outright and the youngest voters leaned no too. The 55-64s, the largest group in the chamber, tipped it decisively toward yes, but there was no clean line from young to old the way there often is on this platform.

The result sits inside a familiar tension in education policy: central government tightening expectations on schools and councils, with legal intervention as the backstop, against long-standing arguments about trust, family circumstance and whether more bureaucracy actually gets children into class. That the parents' generation — squarely in the 45-54 bracket — was the most sceptical group here is the kind of detail that policymakers pushing "whole-school culture" change would do well to notice.

Officialdom got its yes, but not from the people closest to the school gate.