Pupil attendance in English schools is at its highest level since May 2021, new government data shows, but headteachers’ leaders have warned that “we are not out of the woods yet”.
Figures published today by the Department for Education show that attendance in all state-funded schools was 92.2 per cent last week.
And the new data also reveals that Covid-related pupil absence fell below 1 per cent for the first time since July of last year.
Following the spring half term (split for schools between 11-28 February), today’s Covid attendance data came after almost a month’s break, comparing figures from Thursday 3 March with those from Thursday 10 February.
On 3 March, the total number of pupils absent from all state-funded schools because of Covid-related reasons was 58,016 (0.7 per cent), down from 2.2 per cent on 10 February.
Overall attendance is at its highest point since May of last year when it was 92.3 per cent.
The latest Covid-related attendance data comes after major changes in the way the government expects schools and the public to respond to the virus.
On 21 February, the government announced that secondary school staff and pupils would no longer be told to take Covid tests twice a week.
The legal requirement to isolate with a positive case of Covid also ended on 24 February.
Absence in primaries falling at a slower rate
There were 37,282 primary school pupils absent on 3 March owing to all Covid-related reasons, down by 58 per cent from a month previously (88,545).
In secondary schools, there were 20,961 pupils absent for Covid-related reasons on 3 March, a 74 per cent decrease from a month previously (80,350).
This shows that while cases are falling in both primary and secondary state schools, this trend is slower in primaries.
Teacher absence falling but ‘still concerning’
Overall teacher absence fell by just 6 percentage points between the two data collection times, a fact that the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) described as “concerning”.
As of 3 March, more than one in 10 (11 per cent) of schools were still reporting an absence level of 15 per cent of staff.
ASCL general secretary Geoff Barton said this high figure means that “some schools are still having to heavily rely on expensive supply staff to deliver lessons as normal”.
Last month, the DfE announced that the workforce fund would be extended to April 2022, to help schools facing staffing problems. However, the fund has previously been criticised for being too “strict” for schools to access.
Regional disparities in absence rates
The latest data published today also includes a regional breakdown for Covid-related absence on 10 February 2022.
This shows a clear variation across the country, with the highest absence rate of pupils owing to Covid-related reasons in the South West at 3.1 per cent.
The South West also had the highest percentage of Covid-related teacher and leader absence (3.7 per cent).
The lowest Covid-related absence rate as a percentage of all pupils was in London and also the North West, at 1.6 per cent.
Attendance ‘still below’ pre-pandemic average
Nick Brook, deputy general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said the downwards trend in absence figures was encouraging, but that the headline figures “can hide big variations locally”.
“Attendance is still below where it would usually be for this time of year pre-pandemic. This should remind us that we are not out of the woods yet,” he said.
“While everyone hopes that mass school closures are a thing of the past, we must accept that disruption for some may continue in the future, and our responsibility is to ensure no pupil is disadvantaged by it.”
