After an Autumn Term which saw some of the highest levels of absence since the start of the pandemic, the first half of Spring Term represented a big improvement. In this post, we look at how the rest of the term panned out.
As usual, the data we use comes from our 10,000 Attendance Tracker schools.
First, let’s start by plotting weekly absence[1] across Autumn and Spring Terms.
Fortunately, we’ve not seen the levels of absence recorded at the end of Autumn Term (driven by a rapid rise in illness) repeated in Spring.
However, we might have hoped that absence in the second half of Spring Term would be lower than the first, perhaps due to a decrease in seasonal illnesses. But we see that this was not the case. At both primary and secondary, absence in the second half of the term remained roughly the same as the first. As a result, although better than the same period last year, absence across Spring Term at both primary and secondary remains some way above pre-pandemic levels. (6% at primary this year compared with 7.7% last year and 4.1% in Spring 2019; 9.1% at secondary this year compared with 10.7% last year and 5.6% in Spring 2019.)
