Schools have been told to stop recording when a pupil is off for Covid-related reasons in updated government guidance branded “frustrating” and “contradictory” by leaders.
The move comes as Covid cases soar across the country and teachers and school leaders report mass disruption.
Schools will no longer have to mark Covid-related absence with “code X” under the latest changes to the Department for Education’s school attendance guidance.
The DfE will be writing to school leaders to confirm that the change will take effect after Easter.
Explaining the reasoning behind the change, the updated guidance states that pupils with symptoms of Covid-19 are no longer advised to get a test, and most of the scenarios that this category was brought in to record no longer apply.
Schools may continue to use the sub-code (I02) to record illness due to suspected Covid-19, although they are not required to.
Schools were previously advised on 21 February this year that, where a pupil has a confirmed case of Covid-19, they should be recorded as code I (illness) and all other Covid-related reasons such as isolation should be marked with code X.
The DfE had already removed the requirement to record Covid-19 related staff absence last month.
Changes to attendance monitoring ‘really frustrating’
Michael Tidd, headteacher at East Preston Junior School in West Sussex, told Tes that the move was “really frustrating”.
He said that the DfE was pushing the importance of monitoring attendance and getting pupils back in school, yet was consistently “taking away the tools of clarity”.
Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has said that boosting attendance is one of his priorities, and the government’s Schools White Paper called for “more effective use of data” to achieve this.
This included plans for an annual behaviour survey and a national data system “to drive up attendance”.
The DfE also recently published a contract worth £5 million to recruit and train mentors to support persistently absent pupils.
Mr Tidd said the changes to attendance recordings run counter to the DfE’s messaging on attendance.
He said: “We keep talking about concerns about attendance dropping and getting children back in school after Covid, but the DfE isn’t going to collect any information about the impact Covid is having.
“It just seems contradictory to the education secretary’s general message of how important it is that we tackle school absence.”
He added there will be “no way” of knowing from illness figures how much of that absence is caused by Covid.
Speaking on the consequences of the move, Mr Tidd said the biggest issue was that it was “just another administrative burden for schools to have to unpick” the reasons behind their absence figures.
He added: “At the moment, there’s absolutely a postcode lottery on how badly you’ve been affected by Covid.” He believes this change will make it harder to identify the reasons behind regional disparities.
“For some schools, it must be horrendous the amount of time that’s been lost to Covid and yet there’s no indication of that in terms of Ofsted or anything else unless schools are prepared to do the legwork and go and find it all for them.”
Government data published yesterday revealed that Covid-related pupil absence in state-funded schools remained high, at 177,800 on 31 March.
However, the number of secondary pupils absent owing to attendance restrictions being in place to manage outbreaks more than doubled in all state-funded secondary schools, rising from 17,000 on 17 March to 34,300 on 31 March.
Concerns over access to testing
Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said the dropping of code X followed the government’s Living with Covid strategy and the dropping of free tests.
She added: “As part of the government’s Living with Covid strategy, these rules have been dropped and access to free tests has been withdrawn, so it follows that code X is no longer advised.”
On Monday, the NAHT school leaders’ union and ASCL labelled the withdrawal of tests “reckless in the extreme” in a joint letter to the education secretary Nadhim Zahawi.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, said the change to attendance coding felt “symptomatic of the government’s wider attempts to try to pretend that the pandemic is over”.
Mr Whiteman said that the change amid high Covid absences made “very little sense” and “ultimately means that we will have less granular information about why pupils have been absent from school”.
A DfE spokesperson said: “In line with our transition to living with Covid-19, we no longer advise schools to record pupils who do not attend for reasons related to Covid-19 using code X.
“Where a pupil is not attending because they have symptoms of Covid-19 or have had a positive test, schools should record this using code I (illness).
“We will be writing to schools directly to confirm this change should be made when they return from their Easter break.”
