Over a third of secondary pupils and a quarter of primary pupils were persistently absent this term, with figures even higher among disadvantaged students, new data reveals.

New data up to 3rd December released by the the FFT education data lab this afternoon reveals the stark number of pupils who have been persistently absent from school so far this year.

Disadvantaged pupils were the worst affected, with data showing almost half of pupils in Years 10 and 11 have missed at least 10 per cent of sessions. Staggeringly, almost 1 in five have missed 20 per cent of sessions.
 

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Secondary

The figures show that over a third (35 per cent) of pupils in Years 7 to 11 were persistently absent this term by the start of this month , due to an increase in illness related absence.

12 per cent of secondary pupils missed 20 per cent of sessions, while five percent missed 30 per cent.

Sessions are equal to half days (morning and afternoon), as set out in guidance by the DfE.

Primary 

The report also shows that by the start of this month 25 per cent of primary pupils missed 10 per cent of sessions (or more) - the DfE threshold for persistent absence.

The data also reveals that 7 per cent of pupils have missed 20 per cent of sessions (or more), while 2 per cent have missed 30 per cent of sessions (or more).

Disadvantage gap

The data showed that persistent absence among disadvantaged pupils is far more likely to be due to unauthorised absence.

FFT said the data shows that it is “unquestionably” the case that most absence was due to illness.

“If we exclude illness and absences due to isolation then the persistent absence rates would fall to 4 per cent and 7 per cent respectively.

“Scaling these numbers up to the full population would suggest there would be 140,000 persistent absentees in primary schools and 210,000 in secondary schools if we adopted this definition.”

The report was based on data collected from 5,200 primary schools and 2,500 secondary schools this academic year.

It also showed London as having the lowest regional recording of persistent absence, falling at under 25 per cent of pupils recorded as persistent absentees. 

Data collected by the FFT and published last month revealed over 20 per cent of pupils in Years 1 to 6 and over 30 per cent of pupils in Years 7 to 11 were recorded as persistent absentees.

This figure is more than double the rate of persistent absence in 2019 before the pandemic.