Week 39 2025

Pupil attendance in schools

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Department for Education

Introduction

These figures are derived from regular data automatically submitted to the Department for Education (DfE) by participating schools. The data is submitted on a daily basis and includes the attendance codes (opens in new tab) for each pupil on their registers during the morning and afternoon sessions.

Figures relate to the attendance of 5 to 15 year old (i.e. compulsory school age) pupils in state-funded primary, secondary and special schools in England.

The figures are published as Official Statistics to give an indicative figure for the absence rate during the 2025/26 academic year, from the 08 September 2025. For the full 2024/25 academic year and termly pupil absence data, including by characteristics please see this historical publication.

Prior to the 2025/26 academic year, these statistics were labelled as Official Statistics in Development. The change to Official Statistics reflects improvements in data quality and coverage following the introduction of mandatory school attendance data sharing. We are now confident that the statistics meet the required standards of quality, trustworthiness, and value as set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Further details about this change can be found in the methodology note. We welcome feedback on these statistics via the details in the “contact us” section below.

The pupil attendance dashboard (opens in new tab) will be updated fortnightly, providing aggregate metrics on overall absence and reasons for absence estimated at national, regional and local authority level only. Due to the timeliness of the data and that they are based on a subset of schools, figures are estimates that we expect to change as registers are adjusted. They should be viewed as an early indicator for the more detailed but less frequent Accredited Official Statistics on pupil absence (which include school level breakdowns). The Accredited Official Statistics are updated termly, with the latest data published published on 7 August 2025 relating to the 2024/25 Autumn term, including data on characteristics.

From the start of the 2024/25 academic year, it became mandatory for schools to share attendance data (opens in new tab) with the DfE. If you are a school that is not already sharing your daily attendance data, you need to approve this in your Wonde portal. This will also give you, your local authority and your multi-academy trust (if applicable) access to daily attendance reports (opens in new tab) to help identify pupils needing attendance support earlier.

Schools can use the ‘Compare your attendance (opens in 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.

Related information

Releases in this series

View releases (73) for Pupil attendance in schools

Methodologies

Headline facts and figures - 2025

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  • Data catalogue

    Browse and download open data files from this release in our data catalogue

  • Data guidance

    Learn more about the data files used in this release using our online guidance

  • Download all data (ZIP)

    Download all data available in this release as a compressed ZIP file

Latest data - week commencing 22 September 2025

Access the Pupil attendance and absence in schools in England: data dashboard (opens in new tab) here.

The latest data relates to the week commencing 22 September 2025 and is available in the pupil attendance dashboard (opens in new tab). Data is collected on a daily basis and data for the interim weeks between publications is included in year-to-date figures and is available on a daily and weekly basis in the underlying data 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.

The data shows that the attendance rate across the week for all schools was 93.98%, giving an overall absence rate of 6.02%. The absence rate varied across the week with a low of 5.66% on Wednesday, and a peak 6.75% on Friday. The peak in absence on a Friday is in line with weekly patterns seen during 2024/25 and in historical attendance data.

Users should be aware of the following:

  • Response rate - Of schools participating in the School Census, 99% provided information on the latest full day of data (26 September 2025). Therefore national figures are estimates. Across school types this was: 99% of state-funded primary schools, 97% of state-funded secondary schools and 97% of state-funded special schools. The response rate may vary at certain points of the year due to different term dates. It also became mandatory for schools to share attendance data with the DfE from the start of the 2024/25 academic year, meaning the number of schools reporting may change over time.
  • Reporting lag - Schools update their registers continually and attendance codes change, resulting in absence rates for particular days to decrease over time. Analysis of data from the Summer 2022 term suggests that the absence rate could decrease around 1 percentage point before settling down. Historical figures from week 37 onwards will be recalculated in each publication.
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Academic year to date

Access the Pupil attendance and absence in schools in England: data dashboard (opens in new tab) here.

Data for the academic year 2025/26 relates to the period from 08 September 2025 to 26 September 2025. Data from across the year to date is available in the pupil attendance dashboard (opens in new tab) and the data catalogue on this page (see “Explore data and files”).

Overall absence across the 2025/26 academic year to date was 5.52%.

Absence has increased from the start of term, from 4.77% in week commencing 08 September, to 5.78% in week commencing 15 September and 6.02% in week commencing 22 September. This appears to be driven primarily by illness absence, which has increased from 1.88% in the week commencing 08 September to 3.07% in the week commencing 22 September.

Users should be aware of the following:

  • Response rate - Of schools participating in the School Census, 99% provided information on the latest full day of data (26 September 2025). Therefore national figures are estimates. Across school types this was: 99% of state-funded primary schools, 97% of state-funded secondary schools and 97% of state-funded special schools. The response rate may vary at certain points of the year due to different term dates. It also became mandatory for schools to share attendance data with the DfE from the start of the 2024/25 academic year, meaning the number of schools reporting may change over time.
  • Reporting lag - Schools update their registers continually and attendance codes change, resulting in absence rates for particular days to decrease over time. Analysis of data from the Summer 2022 term suggests that the absence rate could decrease around 1 percentage point before settling down. Historical figures from week 37 onwards will be recalculated in each publication.
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Help and support

Methodology

Find out how and why we collect, process and publish these statistics.

Official statistics

These are Official Statistics and have been produced in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics (opens in new tab).

This can be broadly interpreted to mean that these statistics are:

  • managed impartially and objectively in the public interest
  • meet identified user needs
  • produced according to sound methods
  • well explained and readily accessible

Find out more about the standards we follow to produce these statistics through our Standards for official statistics published by DfE guidance (opens in new tab).

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).

OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics (opens in new tab) that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website (opens in new tab).

Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Pupil attendance in schools statistics and data:

School Census Statistics Team

Email: schools.statistics@education.gov.uk
Contact name: School Census Statistics Team

Press office

If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

Public enquiries

If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:

Telephone: 037 0000 2288

Opening times:
Monday to Friday from 9.30am to 5pm (excluding bank holidays)