Pupil absence was rising again at the end of January after dipping following the Christmas break, Department for Education figures show.
Overall, the absence rate rose to 7.1 per cent across all schools in the week commencing 23 January, with the authorised absence rate rising to 5 per cent.
Absence rose to 5.8 per cent in state-funded primary schools compared with 4.7 per cent in the week commencing 9 January.
However, the unauthorised absence rate for the week commencing 23 January dropped slightly to 2.1 per cent from 2.2 per cent in the previous period.
And in secondary state-funded settings, absence rose to 8.7 per cent in the week commencing 23 January from 7.8 per cent in the previous period.
In special-school settings, absence was 13.1 per cent in the week beginning 23 January, up from 11.7 per cent.
Increase in illness absence
Overall, illness absence was up to 4 per cent, an increase of 0.8 percentage points from the week commencing 2 January.
In the seven days ending on 24 January, there was an increase in England in the prevalence of Covid among primary and secondary school pupils, despite infections falling across most age groups.
Overall, the DfE data showed that the attendance rate across the academic year to date was 92.3 per cent.
In the early part of December 2022 more than 10 per cent of lessons were missed by students, with the vast majority being down to illness, according to DfE data.
This showed that absence from school had reached levels seen at the same point in December the previous year after the onset of the Omicron wave of the Covid pandemic.
