Schools will be able to compare their attendance rates with others across the country after the government launched its online attendance dashboard.
The new national dashboard, announced earlier this month, will show a regional and local authority picture of attendance, including the reasons why pupils are missing school.
Education secretary Kit Malthouse has said it will help schools to “tackle absence” because it will allow staff to spot trends in persistent absence by comparing their own attendance rates with other local schools and looking at the reasons for non-attendance on a national level.
Mr Malthouse said raising school attendance standards was one of his “key missions”.
“The first, and most basic, requirement is that kids turn up consistently, and on time”, he added.
Improving school attendance
“Over the past few years we have revolutionised how attendance is tracked and monitored across schools, academy trusts and councils. The national dashboard launch marks a significant step, helping everyone who works with children to use data so they can take action to tackle absence.”
The new dashboard, which can be found on the Department for Education website, shows that attendance was 94.6 per cent across all schools in the week commencing 12 September 2022.
This is not directly comparable with previous years because of the impact of high Covid rates, but the DfE said it marked a positive start to the academic year.
The initiative is one of a number of attendance drives being pushed by the DfE this term.
Others include a one-to-one attendance pilot being run in Middlesborough, which will aim to provide tailored support to over 1,600 persistently and severely absent pupils over the three-year period.
Absence has been a commonly discussed issue over the past two years, due in large part to the Covid pandemic.
Towards the end of the last academic year, the proportion of pupils absent from school increased significantly - with almost one in five eligible secondary students absent in early July.
