Three weeks of daily Scottish school attendance records show that pupil absences - both related to Covid and otherwise - soared upwards initially.

After that initial surge, however, absence rates started to fall back, although the school attendance rate has not yet recovered to the high point recorded in mid-August.

Scottish schools started returning from the summer holiday on Tuesday 11 August, with a deadline of 18 August for a full return of pupils throughout the country. The daily attendance figures - which can be seen here and in the table below - start from 17 August, with the most recent figures for Friday 4 September, meaning there are now three full weeks of data.

Background: Scotland to publish Covid-related school absence rates

Back to school: School attendance 95% on the day before pupils’ full return

Also today: Scotland halfway towards Covid teacher numbers target

Last month, it emerged that the Scottish government would publish daily updates on attendance in local authority schools, including absences connected in some way to Covid-19.

On Monday 17 August, the first day on which a national figure was recorded and a day before the deadline for the full return of pupils in 2020-21, the school attendance rate was 95.8 per cent, which remains the highest-recorded figure (see table below).

The lowest figure recorded was 84.2 per cent on Friday 28 August, although only 3.5 per cent of absences were officially attributed to “Covid-19 related reasons”.

By Friday 4 September, the most recent day for which data has been published, the school attendance rate was back up to 88.2 per cent.

The highest number of pupils officially absent for Covid-related reasons on a single day was 25,022, on Wednesday 26 August.

The most recent annual school statistics update, published last December, show that there were 697,989 pupils in Scotland’s local authority schools.