Department for Education

Autumn term 2019/20

Pupil absence in schools in England: autumn term

Pupil absence, including overall, authorised and unauthorised absence and persistent absence by reason and pupil characteristics for the autumn term.

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This publication has been superseded by Pupil absence in schools in England

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• Published: 28 May 2020
• Last updated: 10 December 2020

1 update

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Explore data used in this release

This page provides a range of routes to access data from within this statistical release to suit different users.

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This includes all data sets, guidance files and any supporting files

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• Data sets: download or create tables

  Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.

• Supporting files

  Supporting files provide an area for teams to supply non-standard files for download by users where required.

• Data guidance

  Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

• Data catalogue

  Alternatively use our data catalogue to search and filter for specific data sets from this release or our entire library, providing full data summaries, data previews and access to API data sets.

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Data sets: download or create tables

Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.

7 data sets available for download

Download all (ZIP)

• Absence for 4 year olds

  Local authority, National, Regional

  <p>Overall absence for all enrolments in state-funded primary, secondary and special schools for pupils aged 4. Primary and secondary only before 2016/17.</p>

  • Number of rows: 132,555
  • Indicators:
    • Number of overall absence sessions
    • Number of pupil enrolments
    • Number of schools
  • Filters:
    • School type
  • Time period: 2012/13 Autumn term to 2019/20 Autumn term

  Data set information page
  Create table

• National absence by characteristics

  National

  <p>Absence information by pupil characteristics such as age, gender and ethnicity for England. Only available for 2019/20</p>

  • Number of rows: 265
  • Indicators:
    • Authorised absence rate
    • Authorised absence rate exact
    • Number of authorised absence sessions
  • Filters:
    • Characteristic
    • School type
  • Time period: 2019/20 Autumn term

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Absence by Local Authority by characteristics

  Local authority

  <p>Absence information by pupil characteristics such as age, gender and ethnicity by local authority. Only available for 2019/20.</p>

  • Number of rows: 37,316
  • Indicators:
    • Authorised absence rate
    • Authorised absence rate exact
    • Number of authorised absence sessions
  • Filters:
    • Characteristic
    • School type
  • Time period: 2019/20 Autumn term

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Absence by percent bands

  National

  <p>The number of pupil enrolments by overall, authorised and unauthorised absence percentage point bands. Primary and secondary only before 2016/17.</p>

  • Number of rows: 5,101
  • Indicators:
    • Number of all pupil enrolments that fall into that per cent band for authorised absence
    • Number of all pupil enrolments that fall into that per cent band for overall absence
    • Number of all pupil enrolments that fall into that per cent band for unauthorised absence
  • Filters:
    • Absence percentage band
    • School type
  • Time period: 2006/07 Autumn term to 2019/20 Autumn term

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Absence in Pupil Referral Units

  Local authority, National, Regional

  <p>Absence information for pupil referral units (including alternative provision academies and free schools).</p>

  • Number of rows: 1,068
  • Indicators:
    • Authorised absence rate
    • Number of authorised absence sessions
    • Number of authorised holiday sessions
  • Time period: 2013/14 Autumn term to 2019/20 Autumn term

  Data set information page
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• Enrolments with one or more sessions of absence

  Local authority, National, Regional

  <p>The number of enrolments with one or more session of absence, including by reason for absence. Primary and secondary only before 2016/17.</p>

  • Number of rows: 294,956
  • Indicators:
    • Number of enrolments with at least one absence session due to agreed extended family holiday
    • Number of enrolments with at least one absence session due to agreed family holiday
    • Number of enrolments with at least one absence session due to arriving late
  • Filters:
    • School type
  • Time period: 2006/07 Autumn term to 2019/20 Autumn term

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Absence rates by geographic level

  Local authority, National, Regional

  <p>Absence information for all enrolments in state-funded primary, secondary and special schools including information on overall absence, persistent absence and reason for absence for pupils aged 5-15. Primary and secondary only before 2016/17.</p>

  • Number of rows: 294,956
  • Indicators:
    • Authorised absence rate
    • Authorised holiday rate
    • Authorised other rate
  • Filters:
    • School type
  • Time period: 2006/07 Autumn term to 2019/20 Autumn term

  Data set information page
  Create table

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Supporting files

Supporting files provide an area for teams to supply non-standard files for download by users where required.

1 supporting data file

• Pre-release access list

  Download (docx, 48 Kb)

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Data guidance

Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

Description

This document describes the data included in the ‘Pupil absence in schools in England: Autumn 2019’ National Statistics release’s underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in new tab).

The Guide to absence statistics (opens in new tab) should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.

Coverage

This release provides information on the levels of overall, authorised and unauthorised absence in:

• state-funded primary schools
• state-funded secondary schools
• state-funded special schools

It includes information on:

• reasons for absence
• persistent absentees
• absence information for pupil referral units (including alternative provision academies and free schools)
• absence by pupil characteristics (2019/20 only)

The information is based on pupil level absence data collected via the school census.

A guide on how we produce pupil absence statistics (opens in new tab) is also available with further detail on the methods used. The underlying data files include national, regional, local authority and school level absence information from autumn 2006 to autumn 2019 for schools in England. Data from autumn 2006 to autumn 2015 cover primary and secondary schools only. Termly absence data has been collected from special schools from autumn 2016 and appears in the underlying data from that point.

File formats and conventions

Rounding

This dataset has not had suppression applied. Rates are presented to one decimal place in the report but are unrounded in the underlying data files

Conventions

The following convention is used throughout the underlying data. 

‘:’ Not applicable.

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Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Pupil absence in schools in England: autumn term statistics and data:

Absence and exclusions statistics

Email: schools.statistics@education.gov.uk
Contact name: School census statistics team

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Telephone: 020 7783 8300

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