‘More to be done’ to bring down school absences, says education secretary

The education secretary has admitted that there is “more work to be done” to improve pupil attendance rates in England after official figures showed levels of persistent absence remained double those of pre-pandemic years.

The figures for the 2022-23 school year published by the Department for Education confirmed that pupils at state schools in England were absent at much higher rates than before Covid, including authorised absences for illness as well as unauthorised absences.

While the figures are a substantial improvement over the very high rates of absence seen when Covid was rampant during 2020 and 2021, there are concerns that non-attendance remained stubbornly high this year.

“School attendance is just as important on the last day of term as it is on the first,” Gillian Keegan said. “It’s encouraging to see more children in school this year than last, but there is still more work to be done.

“Barriers to children attending school are wide and varied. We are supporting parents and teachers year-round to make sure children are in classrooms and ready to learn.”

The national figures show that 7.5% of school days were missed in state schools from autumn 2022 to summer 2023, a rise of 60% compared with 2018-19’s overall absence rate of 4.7%.

In state primary schools the absence rate doubled to 6% from 3% in 2018-19, while in secondary schools the rate was 9.3%, compared with 5.5% in the year before the pandemic began.

More concerning was the proportion of pupils who missed 10% or more days in the classroom, who the DfE classes as persistently absent. The past school year saw 17% of primary school pupils and 28% of mainstream secondary school pupils classed as persistently absent, more than double the figures of 8% and 13.7% recorded in 2018-19.

“Being in school is quite simply the most important thing for children’s education, and so valuable for their mental health. We all – government, schools, parents and young people – have a part to play in making sure classrooms are full day in, day out,” Keegan said.

In June the Guardian revealed that absences had ballooned among year 11 students, whose GCSE results will be published this month.

Many secondary schools have hired attendance or student welfare officers to tackle the problem, while some schools are employing “emotionally based school avoidance” counsellors to help students overcome anxiety or other barriers to returning to school.