Access the Pupil attendance and absence in schools in England: data dashboard (opens in a new tab) here
Data for the academic year 2023/24 relates to the period from 11 September 2023 to 24 November 2023. Data is available in the pupil attendance dashboard (opens in a new tab) and the data catalogue available on this page (see “Explore data and files”). The dashboard displays attendance and absence headline figures, and reasons for absence at national, regional and local authority geographic levels. Data is available across primary, secondary and special schools and can be broken down by individual school type.
Overall absence during the 2023/24 year to date was 6.4%. Absence in the week commencing 16 October, the week immediately prior to half-term for most schools, was 7.1%. This represented an increase from the start of term when it was 5.0% and the previous peak of 6.8% in the week commencing 25 September. Following half-term, absence rates fell to 6.3% in the week commencing 6 November but have since risen and were 7.0% in the week commencing 20 November.
The majority of the change in absence has been driven by illness absence, however prior to half-term there was a small increase in unauthorised absence, from 2.0% in week commencing 11 September to 2.1% in week commencing 25 September, peaking at 2.6% in the week commencing 16 October (immediately prior to half-term). Unauthorised absence has since fallen since half-term and was 2.1% in the week commencing 20 November.
The increase in absence prior to half-term is in line with weekly patterns seen during 2022/23 and in historical attendance data. In the 2022/23 academic year, absence increased by 1.1 percentage points between the week commencing 10 October and the week commencing 17 October, similar to the increase we've seen between the equivalent weeks of this academic year although half-term dates do differ slightly between academic years.
Users should be aware of the following:
- Response rate - 87% of schools shared data in the most recent week (though this has varied throughout the period of data collection), therefore national figures are estimates. Across school types this was: 89% of state-funded primary schools, 82% of state-funded secondary schools and 77% of state-funded special schools.
- Estimates for non-response - In recognition that response rates are not equal across school types and, therefore, not representative of the total school population, the total rates for all schools has been weighted based on the Spring 2023 school census.
- Reporting lag - Schools update their registers continually and attendance codes change, resulting in absence rates for a particular day to decrease over time. Analysis of data from the Summer 2022 term suggests that this could be a decrease in the absence rate of around 1 percentage point before settling down. Historical figures will be recalculated in each publication.
- As a result of data quality improvements in the underlying data, this publication sees a refresh of figures throughout the academic year to date. The overall impact at national and regional level is minimal, however there may be larger changes to historical figures for local authorities with a small number of schools.
If you are a school that has not yet signed up to share your data, please visit Share your daily school attendance data (opens in a new tab) for more information. This will also give you, your local authority and your multi-academy trust (if applicable) access to daily attendance reports (opens in a new tab) to help identify pupils needing attendance support earlier.
Schools can now use the ‘Compare your attendance (opens in a new tab)’ dashboard to compare with other schools in the local authority. This has been updated to show data for this current academic year. Use it to compare absence and unauthorised absence for your school, as well as special educational needs and free school meals pupils.