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School attendance in England

Responsibility for school attendance

Parents in England are responsible for ensuring that their child receives an appropriate full-time education. When a child is registered at school, parents are responsible for securing their child’s regular attendance.

There are reasons that absence from school in term-time may be authorised, most commonly for pupil illness. Authorisation of absence for other reasons is a matter for schools, but should only be granted in exceptional circumstances. It is unlikely to be granted for a family holiday. Parents may be fined for unauthorised absences.

The Department for Education has published statutory guidance on Working together to improve school attendance which sets out the relevant roles and responsibilities of schools, academy trusts, governing bodies, and local authorities.

Concerns about school attendance levels

Since the relaxation of restrictions on schools imposed during the height of the Covid pandemic, there have been concerns about increased absence from school, and in particular an increase in the proportion of pupils with high levels of absence.

At the time of writing, the estimated absence rate for the 2023/24 academic year to date was 7.2%. This is not directly comparable to final data that has been published for previous years.

The most recent final Department for Education attendance statistics for a complete academic year is for 2022/23, when the absence rate for any reason was 7.4%. This is slightly lower than the previous academic year, 2021/22, when it was 7.6%. However, it is higher than in the six years prior to the pandemic (when absence ranged between 4.5% and 4.8%).

In 2022/23, 21.2% of pupils were recorded as “persistently absent” (defined by the Department for Education as missing 10% or more of possible school sessions). This equates to around 1.6 million pupils.

Some groups of pupils are more likely to be absent or persistently absent than others. For example, in 2022/23, 36.5% of free school meal-eligible pupils were persistently absent compared with 15.6% of pupils that were not eligible.

School attendance and attainment

On average, pupils with higher absence over key stage 4 (year ten to year eleven) had lower GCSE attainment in 2019. This is the most recent DfE data on the link between absence and attainment.

Pupils who did not achieve grades 9-4 in English and maths GCSEs in 2019 had an absence rate of 8.8%, compared with 5.2% among pupils who achieved grade 4 in both subjects, and 3.7% among pupils who achieved grade 5 or above.

Pupils who were persistently or severely absent (who missed more than 10% and 50% respectively of possible school sessions) had lower average attainment. 35.6% of persistently absent pupils, and just 11.3% of severely absent pupils achieved grades 9-4 in English and maths (compared to 67.6% of all pupils).