Your board should regularly review attendance data and help your leaders focus improvement efforts
This involves:
- Regularly reviewing attendance data at board meetings (including looking at school-level trends and benchmarking with other schools)
- Paying particular attention to pupil cohorts that have had poor attendance historically, or face entrenched barriers to attendance. For example, pupils:
- With a social worker
- From a background or ethnicity where attendance has been low
- With a long-term medical condition
- With special education needs and/or disabilities (SEND)
- Who are eligible for free school meals (FSM)
- Working with your senior leaders to set goals or areas of focus for attendance, and providing challenge and support on these areas
This is explained in paragraph 78 of the Department for Education (DfE)'s statutory guidance on working together to improve school attendance.
Read our article on your role in improving school attendance to understand your other duties under the guidance.
Understand what persistent and severe absence mean
- Persistent absence is when a pupil misses 10% or more of school
- This is equal to 1 day or more every 2 weeks
- Severe absence is when a pupil misses more than 50% of school
This is set out in paragraphs 132 and 133 of the attendance guidance.
Scrutinise your school or trust's attendance summary report
The DfE is encouraging school and trust leaders to share this report with their governing bodies, to allow you to consider the effectiveness of your school or trust's current attendance strategies. The report is a termly summary, based on the daily attendance data your school leaders share with the DfE.
You'll need to request it from your senior leaders, as it's available from the DfE's Monitor your school attendance service, which requires a DfE sign-in. You don't need to log in to the portal yourself, as it's for school/trust leaders, but they should share the summary report with you.
At the moment the report is only available for mainstream secondary schools, but will be rolled out for other school types in the near future. We'll update this article when this happens.
What's in the report?
It contains:
- Headline data on your overall attendance and persistent absence, compared to the national average
- The weekly attendance levels in your school tracked against the national average
- A comparison of attendance for different pupil groups (e.g. pupils with SEN and pupils eligible for FSM) compared with the national average and the previous academic year
- A table showing the number of pupils in each 5% band of absence severity, by year group (more on this below)
It's designed to help you see trends, evaluate the effectiveness of current strategies and focus improvement efforts. If you're a trustee, it can also help you identify variation between schools and direct support appropriately.
Use the report to inform the questions you ask your leaders about attendance and absence – we've suggested some below.
Use the absence bandings table to look beyond the headline data
Your leaders will have access to a more detailed version of this table in a separate report, which allows them to see which individual pupils fall into each banding. Even though the data shared with your board doesn't include this, the absence bandings table you do have can help you to discuss trends and strategies.
Below is a sample table provided by the DfE. The absence bandings table in your summary report will look similar to this, showing absence split into 5% bandings by year group. (Sixth form year groups aren't included.)
Unlike the school leaders' version, your table won't show identifiable data for individual pupils.
As you can see above, the report your school leaders will share with you will show data for each 5% banding of severity, split by year group.
Ask your school leaders whether any particular pupil groups are disproportionately represented
They should be able to explain what lies behind the data, e.g.:
- A higher number of pupils missing more than 20% of school in year 11 is driven by a group of girls eligible for FSM
- A higher number of year 10 pupils missing more than 50% of school compared to other year groups reflects a larger cohort of children with SEN in that year
This information will allow you to hold your school leaders to account for directing specific support to these groups of pupils. You should monitor the impact of any strategies your leaders put in place. Find questions to ask about this below.
Ask your senior leaders questions
To scrutinise your school's absence and attendance rates, ask your senior leadership team these questions:
Figures
- What are our persistent absence figures?
- How does our attendance compare with the national and local figures?
- What patterns or trends are emerging from comparing weekly, half-termly, termly, and annual absence data?
Groups of pupils
- Is absence (and persistent absence) more widespread within certain groups of pupils?
- Are there any groups or cohorts of pupils that are over or underrepresented in any of the absence bands?
- Are the figures skewed by a small number of pupils?
- Is there a particular age group/year/class that has a significantly lower attendance rate than the others?
- How does our absence data for pupils eligible for FSM and pupils with SEND compare to local and national averages?
- Which groups of pupils should we be particularly concerned about and what can we do to improve their attendance?
Your school's approach
- How are we monitoring pupils’ attendance to identify patterns and any concerns?
- Are we making use of the DfE's view your education data tool to access near real time data to interpret trends?
- How much of our absence is authorised?
- What are we doing to promote attendance?
- What impact are these strategies having?
- If poor attendance is a problem, what strategies have we put in place to address this?
- Is our school improvement plan (SIP) clear about what we're doing to improve school attendance?
- Do all staff receive appropriate training to support good attendance?
- Are we committing the right resources to tackling absence?
Support for pupils and parents/carers
- How are we supporting:
- Pupils at risk of becoming persistently absent?
- Persistently absent pupils?
- Severely absent pupils?
- Cohorts of pupils with lower attendance than their peers?
- Do all pupils feel welcome and supported at school?
- Are parents and carers aware of the school attendance policy?
- Do they understand what is expected of parents/carers and pupils?
- How are staff supported to consistently communicate the importance of attendance to parents/carers and pupils?
- Do we consider pupils' and parents/carers' views when we set our attendance policy?
Ask these questions if you're:
- A link governor for attendance performing a monitoring visit
- Part of a committee or monitoring pair responsible for attendance
- Any governor, if you're at a full governing board meeting discussing attendance
Benchmark against national statistics
Download absence statistics for all state-funded schools from May 2010 onwards and compare your school's attendance figures. Here's a summary of the most recent headlines:
Persistent absentees (10% or more missed)
| School type | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary schools | 8.7% | 8.2% | 8.8% | 17.7% | 16.2% |
| Secondary schools | 13.9% | 13.7% | 14.8% | 27.7% | 26.5% |
| Special schools | 29.6% | 28.8% | 48.9% | 40.4% | 38.3% |
Severe absentees (50% or more missed)
| School type | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary schools | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.7% | 0.6% | 0.7% |
| Secondary schools | 1.2% | 1.3% | 1.5% | 2.7% | 3.4% |
| Special schools | 4.4% | 4.6% | 5.6% | 5.8% | 6.2% |
The figures indicate the percentage of all pupils on roll. The data is taken from the DfE's 2022/23 pupil absence data – go to the 'persistent absence' section.
You can also benchmark against local statistics using the table and interactive map within the 'geographical variations' section of the pupil absence data, linked above.
A note on the data
- 2021/22 data – sessions where a pupil was not attending in circumstances related to coronavirus (e.g. isolating with symptoms of COVID-19 while waiting for test results) were not counted as an absence but did count towards possible sessions, as schools were expected to provide immediate access to remote education. However, positive COVID-19 cases were counted as an absence
- 2020/21 data – sessions where a pupil was not attending in circumstances related to coronavirus (including when advised to shield, when quarantining after returning from abroad, when in a class bubble advised to isolate, and during periods of national restrictions) were not counted as an absence. However, these sessions did count towards possible sessions. During these sessions, these pupils could not physically attend school, but schools were expected to provide immediate access to remote education
- Special school data 2020/21 – there was a large increase seen in persistent absence in special schools, increasing from 28.8% in 2018/19 to 48.9% in 2020/21. This is driven by the fact that pupils in special schools were prioritised to continue to attend during the national lockdown, but where they did not this was recorded as authorised absence
- 2019/20 data – the government cancelled the data for the 2019/20 academic year due to the impact of coronavirus
Sixth formers and 4-year-olds are not included
The DfE monitors and reports on absence figures for pupils who are of compulsory school age – i.e. aged between 5 and 15 at the start of the academic year (31 August).
See paragraph 1.4 of the DfE's guide to absence statistics.
Information is collected at enrolment level rather than pupil level
This means that if a pupil has moved schools during the academic year, they'll be counted more than once. This is because they have recorded attendance and absence at more than 1 school. See section 1.5 of the guide to absence statistics..
A pupil's attendance/absence is included in the statistics for the periods that they were actually enrolled at the school and had sessions there that they were supposed to attend. So if, for example, a pupil was on roll for a couple of weeks in the autumn term but then left, their attendance would count towards the aggregation for the:
- Autumn figures
- Combined autumn and spring figures
- Full academic year figures
Their attendance wouldn't be included in the single spring or summer term statistics for that year, because they wouldn't have any possible sessions in those terms.
A representative from the school census statistics team told us this.
Keep track of the most recent national absence data
Look out for 3 statistical releases each year:
- Autumn term: usually published in May and features data for the autumn term
- Combined autumn and spring term: published in October and features data for the previous academic year's autumn and spring terms combined
- Full year: published in March and features data for the whole of the previous academic year (autumn, spring and summer terms combined)
This is explained in section 1.3 of the guide to absence statistics.
Make sure you know the law
It will be easier to assess whether your school's attendance data and procedures are good if you have a good grasp of the law.
If you need to know more about the attendance rules, we've produced a short summary.
Remember that neither Ofsted nor the DfE has attendance targets for schools, or numerical definitions of what makes attendance 'outstanding', 'good', 'requires improvement' or 'inadequate'.
Consider the Ofsted criteria
Think about how your attendance data and procedures would fare in an inspection.
Attendance levels don't automatically correspond to specific Ofsted outcomes, but inspectors look at attendance as part of the 'behaviour and attitudes' judgement.
This judgement focuses on factors that contribute strongly to pupils' positive behaviour and attitudes – so, factors that give pupils the greatest possible opportunity to achieve positive outcomes. This includes:
- Having a strong focus on attendance and punctuality so that all pupils benefit from the education and experiences the school offers
- Having clear and effective behaviour and attendance policies with clearly defined consequences that are applied consistently and fairly by all staff
Inspectors will focus on:
- Overall absence and persistent absence rates for all pupils, and for different groups compared with national averages for all pupils
- The extent to which pupils with persistent and severe absence are improving their attendance over time and whether attendance is consistently low
- The school's analysis of attendance data and how it has fed into the school's approach to improving attendance
- School leaders' understanding of the causes of absence and whether a clear strategy is in place which takes these into account
However, inspectors also recognise the context of the pandemic. Attendance between March 2020 and March 2021 will not impact on inspectors' judgement of your school.
See paragraphs 312 and 315 to 319 of the School Inspection Handbook.
The behaviour and attitudes grade descriptors that mention attendance are:
| Grade | Grade descriptors |
|---|---|
| 'Outstanding' |
Attendance is not mentioned specifically, but could be considered to contribute towards this descriptor:
|
| 'Good' |
|
| 'Inadequate' |
|
This is set out in paragraphs 471 and 472 of the inspection handbook.
Severe absence may be a safeguarding issue
Significant periods of unauthorised absence from school can indicate that a pupil is at risk from serious safeguarding issues, such as abuse or violent crime. It may also be a safeguarding concern in itself – if severe absence continues after your school has attempted to intervene, this is likely to constitute neglect.
Make sure that staff:
- Recognise this link
- Have processes in place to identify and address the issue
- Report any concerns to the designated safeguarding lead