Access the Pupil attendance and absence in schools in England: data dashboard (opens in a new tab) here
Data for the academic year 2023/24 relates to the period from 11 September 2023 to 19 July 2024. Data is available in the pupil attendance dashboard (opens in a new tab) and the data catalogue available on this page (see “Explore data and files”). The dashboard displays attendance and absence headline figures, and reasons for absence at national, regional and local authority geographic levels. Data is available across primary, secondary and special schools and can be broken down by individual school type.
Across the 2023/24 academic year, overall absence is 7.2%. Overall absence was 6.7% during the Autumn term, 7.3% during the Spring term and 7.7% during the Summer term.
The rate of persistent absence (pupils who miss 10% or more of their possible sessions) for the 2023/24 academic year is 20.7%. This has increased from the beginning of the academic year. In the Autumn term the rate of persistent absence was 19.9% which increased to 21.8% in the Spring term and to 23.9% in the Summer term.
In the Autumn term, absence was highest (8.3%) in the final full week of term (week commencing 11 December 2023), up from the start of the academic year when it was 4.9% and the previous peak in the week prior to the Autumn half-term when it was 7.1%.
Absence fell following the Autumn term, dropping to 6.5% in the week commencing 8 January, but increased across the first half of Spring term to a peak of 8.0% in the week just prior to half-term. Absence fell again following Spring half-term to 6.7%, and then rose across the second half of the Spring term to 8.2%.
Following the Easter holiday, absence fell to 6.6% in the week commencing 8 April. Across the summer term, absence peaked at 10.2% in the most recent week, the final week of the Summer term. There were additional peaks in absence during the week prior to the Summer half term (9.2%) and the week commencing 17 June (8.9%) when there was high absence due to religious observance around Eid al-Adha. The increase in absence prior to half-term and the end of term is in line with weekly patterns seen during 2022/23 and in historical attendance data.
Illness absence was highest in the Autumn term, peaking at 4.5% in the week commencing 11 December, up from the start of term when it was 2.0%. Illness absence fell at the start of the Spring term, dropping to 3.1% in the week commencing 8 January, but then increased to 4.5% in the week commencing 22 January. Illness remained around this level until the Spring half-term. Illness fell following the Spring half-term, to 3.2% in the week commencing 19 February however rose across the second half of the term to peak around 4.0% for the final few weeks of the term. Illness absence fell following the Easter holiday to around 3% and increased to 3.8% in the most recent week.
Unauthorised absence was fairly stable around 2.0% across the Autumn term, with peaks in the week immediately prior to half-term when it was 2.5% and in the final week of term when it was 2.7%. Unauthorised absence remained high in the first week of 2024 (3.1%) however then fell and remained around 2.3% for most of the first half of Spring term. There was a small increase in unauthorised absence in the week prior to half-term, when it was 2.5%. Unauthorised absence remained around this rate for most of the second half of Spring term, peaking at 3.0% in the final week of the Spring term. Unauthorised absence remained high following the Easter holiday, and was 5.0% in the most recent week.
Free school meals (FSM)
The overall absence rate for pupils who are eligible for free school meals is 11.1% across the academic year 2023/24. This compares to 5.8% for those pupils who were not eligible for free school meals.
35.7% of pupils who were eligible for free school meals were persistently absent across the academic year 2023/24, compared to 15.3% of pupils who were not eligible.
Special educational needs (SEN)
The overall absence rate for pupils with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan is 13.3% across the academic year 2023/24. This compares to 10.9% for pupils with SEN support and 6.5% with no identified SEN.
37.6% of pupils with an EHC plan were persistently absent in this period, compared to 32.0% for pupils with SEN support and 18.6% for pupils with no identified SEN.
Sex
The overall absence rate for the academic year 2023/24 was 7.3% for female pupils and 7.1% for male pupils.
The persistent absence rate for this period was 21.0% for female pupils and 20.4% for male pupils.
Users should be aware of the following:
- Response rate - 95% of schools have opted-in to submitting data (though note that this has varied across the year), therefore national figures are estimates. Across school types this was: 95% of state-funded primary schools, 92% of state-funded secondary schools and 90% of state-funded special schools.
- Estimates for non-response - In recognition that response rates are not equal across school types and, therefore, not representative of the total school population, the total rates for all schools has been weighted based on the Spring 2023 school census.
- Reporting lag - Schools update their registers continually and attendance codes change, resulting in absence rates for a particular day to decrease over time. Analysis of data from the Summer 2022 term suggests that this could be a decrease in the absence rate of around 1 percentage point before settling down. Historical figures will be recalculated in each publication.
If you are a school that has not yet signed up to share your data, please visit ‘Share your daily school attendance data (opens in a new tab) (opens in a new tab)’ for more information. This will also give you, your local authority and your multi-academy trust (if applicable) access to daily attendance reports (opens in a new tab) (opens in a new tab) to help identify pupils needing attendance support earlier.
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