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 15 December 2023. At local authority level, where Local Authorities were open during the week commencing 18 December, this data has been included in the year to date figure. 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.
Information on pupil characteristics and persistent absence will be added to this section in early 2024. For this information for the full 2022/23 academic year see this historical publication.
Overall absence during the 2023/24 year to date was 6.8%. 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 4.9% 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 8.4% in the week commencing 11 December.
The majority of the change in absence has been driven by illness absence, however there have also been some smaller changes in unauthorised absence. Unauthorised absence increased from 2.0% in week commencing 11 September to 2.1% in week commencing 25 September, peaking at 2.5% in the week commencing 16 October (immediately prior to half-term). Unauthorised absence fell following half-term and was 2.0% in the week commencing 20 November but has since increased and was 2.8% in the week commencing 11 December.
Increases in absence prior to half-term and the end of the Autumn term are in line with weekly patterns seen during 2022/23 and in historical attendance data. The increase in absence prior to the end of Autumn term 2022/23 was more marked than seen towards the end of Autumn term 2023/24 due to high levels of seasonal flu and other seasonal respiratory illnesses (opens in a new tab) last Autumn.
Users should be aware of the following:
- Response rate - 88% 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: 90% of state-funded primary schools, 83% of state-funded secondary schools and 78% 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.
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.