Data set from Attendance in education and early years settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

Table 1B- Daily attendance in education settings during the COVID-19 outbreak (excludes half term dates 19th October - 23rd October and 2nd November)

Not the latest data

Published 23 March 2021

Last updated 23 March 2021

This file contains daily attendance data for state-funded education settings for dates excluding half term dates. Half term includes  19th October - 23rd October 2020, 2nd November 2020, and  15 February - 19 February 2021.

Data is in this file has been scaled to account for non-response so it is nationally representative.

Further details on the column headings can be found in the “Table 1b variable additions and removal log” ancillary file.

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Data set details

• Theme: COVID-19
• Publication: Attendance in education and early years settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic
• Release: Week 12 2021
• Geographic levels: National
• Indicators:
  • number of children of critical workers attending
  • number of fully open settings
  • number of open settings including inset
• Filters:
  • date
  • phase
• Time period: 2020 Week 37 to 2021 Week 9

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Data set preview

Table showing first 5 rows, from underlying data

time_period	time_identifier	geographic_level	country_code	country_name	date	phase	response_rate	number_responded	number_open_including_inset	proportion_open_including_inset	number_fully_open_settings	proportion_fully_open_settings	number_of_settings_with_one_or_more_students_self_isolating_due_to_COVID_contact_within_settings	proportion_of_settings_with_one_or_more_students_self_isolating_due_to_COVID_contact_within_settings	number_students_attending	proportion_students_attending	number_students_attending_fully_open_settings	proportion_students_attending_fully_open_settings	number_students_with_sw_attending	proportion_students_with_sw_attending	number_students_with_sw_attending_fully_open_settings	proportion_students_with_sw_attending_in_fully_open_settings	number_students_with_ehcp_attending	proportion_students_with_ehcp_attending	number_students_with_ehcp_attending_fully_open_settings	proportion_students_with_ehcp_attending_fully_open_settings	number_children_of_critical_workers_attending	number_of_otherwise_vulnerable_students_attending	total_students_absent_from_open_settings_with_a_suspected_case_of_COVID19	proportion_students_absent_with_a_suspected_case_of_COVID19	total_students_absent_from_open_settings_with_a_confirmed_case_of_COVID19	proportion_students_absent_with_a_confirmed_case_of_COVID19	total_students_absent_from_open_settings_due_to_potential_contact_with_case_of_COVID19_inside_setting	proportion_students_absent_from_open_settings_due_to_potential_contact_with_case_of_COVID19_inside_setting	total_students_absent_from_open_settings_due_to_potential_contact_with_case_of_COVID19_outside_setting	proportion_students_absent_from_open_settings_due_to_potential_contact_with_case_of_COVID19_outside_setting	total_students_not_attending_because_setting_is_closed	proportion_students_not_attending_because_setting_is_closed
2020	Week 37	National	E92000001	England	09/09/2020	State-funded schools	71	15300	21600	99.9	19700	90.9	-	-	7148000	87	6578000	90.3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
2020	Week 37	National	E92000001	England	10/09/2020	State-funded schools	73	15800	21600	99.9	20000	92.4	-	-	7231000	88	6747000	90	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
2020	Week 37	National	E92000001	England	11/09/2020	State-funded schools	73	15700	21600	99.9	20100	92.7	-	-	7130000	86.8	6699000	88.7	133000	82.2	125000	84	232000	80.9	217000	83.3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
2020	Week 38	National	E92000001	England	14/09/2020	State-funded schools	75	16200	21600	99.9	20500	94.8	-	-	7118000	86.4	6768000	87.4	133000	82.2	126000	83.2	231000	80.7	218000	82.5	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
2020	Week 38	National	E92000001	England	15/09/2020	State-funded schools	76	16400	21600	99.9	20400	94.4	-	-	7145000	86.7	6745000	87.7	133000	81.8	125000	83	231000	80.5	217000	82.3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

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Variables in this data set

Table showing first 5 of 34 variables

Variable name	Variable description
date	date
number_children_of_critical_workers_attending	number of children of critical workers attending
number_fully_open_settings	number of fully open settings
number_of_otherwise_vulnerable_students_attending	number of otherwise vulnerable students attending
number_of_settings_with_one_or_more_students_self_isolating_due_to_COVID_contact_within_settings	number of settings with one or more students self isolating due to COVID contact within settings

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Footnotes

1. Response rates among state-funded schools fell on 17 December by 7 percentage points compared to the previous day. Some schools reported inset days or non-COVID related closures on 17 December (1% of responders). Schools are not required to complete the form if on a planned holiday, such as Christmas break and, previously, decreases in response rates have been associated with an increase in school closures. As a result, it is likely there is a greater proportion of closures among non-responders than responder and we do not know the distribution of these between i) COVID-related closures and ii) schools starting Christmas holidays or having inset days as planned. Therefore, estimates for 17 December are less reliable than previous days and likely overestimate open and attendance rates.
2. On Wednesday 7th October, a burst water pipe in East London resulted in a number of schools closing.
3. From 12 October, the education settings survey changed and this metric was discontinued. The changes were made to give more comprehensive data about how many pupils are self-isolating for different reasons.
4. All national level figures are adjusted for non-response. Regional and local authority level figures are based on responding schools only. See accompanying document for full methodology.
5. Open rates are rounded to 1dp for state-funded primary, state-funded secondary, state-funded special and all state-funded schools. For other phases, rates are reported to 0dp and where 100% of settings report they are open, this is reported as 99% given level of uncertainty around these estimates due to lower response rates and/or small population sizes.
6. Due to poor weather conditions in parts of England, there was an increase in non-COVID related closures on 14, 15, 25 and 26 January, and 2, 8, 9, 10 and 11 February.
7. Pupils with a social worker are considered ‘children in need’. Our analysis after adjusting for non-response suggests that schools may be under-reporting the number of children with a social worker when compared to the most recently published children in need statistics. Therefore these estimates only account for pupils with a social worker that are identified by schools.
8. The purpose of this data collection is primarily to understand attendance and teacher availability. This data is reported directly by schools via DfE's daily education settings survey. It is not the primary source of data on infection, incidence and COVID-19 cases overall. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published an analysis of the number of school workers who have had COVID-19 within their Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey publication on 6 November.
9. Schools are considered fully open if they are able to provide face-to-face teaching for all pupils on roll for the whole school day and they have not asked a group of pupils to self-isolate. School guidance states that where pupils are unable to attend school because they are complying with clinical or public health advice, schools are expected to be able to immediately offer them access to remote education.
10. The number of students absent is rounded to the nearest 100, therefore there are some instances where figures between 1 and 49 are rounded to zero.
11. An artificial break was added to the data for the chart on 8 March 2021 to indicate the wider reopening of schools following national lockdown restrictions. This is not indicative of a school holiday.
12. From 12 October, schools were asked to exclude nursery children from their submission. A corresponding decrease was observed in submitted number on roll in schools with nurseries.
13. The following education settings are included: academies (including free schools and studio schools), local authority maintained schools (excluding local authority nursery schools), non-maintained special schools, alternative provision and university technical colleges.
14. Vulnerable children include those who have a social worker, an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) or are identified as otherwise vulnerable by educational providers or local authorities. The number of children who are otherwise vulnerable is calculated by subtracting the number of children of critical workers and the number of children who have a social worker and/or an EHCP from the total number of children in attendance. The otherwise vulnerable measure is an estimate and is not equivalent in quality to other attendance figures. To see in more detail how the number of children who have a social worker and/or an EHCP is calculated, please see the methodology.
15. On 25 September and 2 October, 1% of state-funded schools reported an inset or training day. Schools or colleges with inset or training days are considered as 'open' but not 'fully open'.
16. Secondary schools and colleges were given flexibility to phase the return of pupils between 8 and 12 March to manage testing and the return of pupils. This impacted attendance rates during the week commencing 8 March 2021.
17. Figures for independent schools are unlikely to be representative. We looked at a sample of non-responding school websites across different phases to assess whether they were open to children of key workers and vulnerable children. This was to enable us to assess whether non-responding schools were as likely to be open as the responding schools. For independent schools, we found evidence that non-responding schools were more likely to be closed than responding schools. Open rates and attendance rates for independent schools are likely to be lower than reported here.
18. From 12 October, the education settings survey changed and this new metric was added. The changes were made to give more comprehensive data about how many pupils are self-isolating for different reasons. There are no comparable figures to these from previous weeks.

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