Using new DfE secondary attendance data at your next board meeting

4 December 2024

By Simon Blake - Department for Education | 4 minute read

You will all be aware of the ongoing challenges around school attendance. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, absence has shot up and, as we reach the end of the calendar year, remains stubbornly high.

Broadly there are three distinct challenges:

A large cohort of pupils not in school almost every day: In England, we have 2.8 million pupils who miss between 10-15% of school, equivalent to 10-30 days per academic year.
A smaller cohort of pupils missing more than 50% of school: There are 150,000 pupils who miss more than 50% of school. Although a smaller number, the cost to these pupils is enormous, and this kind of absence disproportionately affects those children eligible for Free School Meals, or with Special Educational Needs.
Children missing education altogether: There are 117,100 children of compulsory school age who aren’t registered at school at all.

There is a clear detrimental impact to pupils of not being in school. It can often mean poorer mental and physical health, poorer outcomes, and even increased risk of harm.

Attendance must be everyone’s business, and I see governors and trustees as critical to providing that expert support and challenge function to the schools and communities you serve. That’s why I’m delighted to be guest authoring this blog for GovernorHub.

Our new Monitor Your School Attendance summary report for secondary school leaders

We have world-leading attendance data flowing directly from schools. This data, used well, can play a critical role in helping you to understand the problem in your school(s) and target resources and interventions to where they will have the greatest impact.

To support schools to share data with governing boards, we have made available a new attendance summary report for secondary schools, which school leaders can access via the free Monitor your school attendance service tool.

Your attendance summary report is a word document. It covers your schools’ attendance for the first half of the autumn term in the 2024 to 2025 academic year.

We recommend asking your school leader(s) to bring this report to your next board meeting for discussion.

The report provides a summary of your school's:

overall attendance and persistent absence compared with national averages
attendance for different pupil groups (eg, pupils with special education needs support and eligible for free school meals) compared with the national average and previous academic year
pupils in each 5% absence band of severity of absence, by year group (see below)

For each attendance measure, you get guidance on where in the tool to find your latest results. You can use this report as a focus for discussions on attendance during meetings of governors or trustees to:

celebrate success
discuss current strategies to attendance
evaluate their effectiveness
understand whether alternative approaches are needed.

If your school leadership team cannot access the attendance data summary report, please refer them to the guidance to access your school attendance data.

View the DfE's sample report

Why it's useful to look at absences in 5% bands of severity

All schools, academy trusts and local authorities now have access to the absence bandings information in this new report. It is a powerful method of analysis – and one that schools with the highest or most improved attendance use regularly.

You will all be aware of the overall, persistent and severe absence rates in the schools you govern. These remain critical measures. But, by looking at absence in 5% bands of severity, you can look beyond those headline statistics and understand the full distribution of absence. This will support you to:

identify pupils with and approaching persistent and severe absence rates
identify absence trends and pupils who need support
consider underlying causes of absence

Finally, thank you...

Schools have been investing immense effort in improving attendance and there has been some progress. It is thanks to everyone in education, including governors and trustees, that last year 380,000 more pupils were in school almost every day compared to the year before.

But we all know that there is more to do, and I’m grateful for the tens of thousands of you that give up your time to support the sector.