When we last looked at pupil absence, at the end of Autumn Term, we saw a small improvement compared with the previous Autumn. And we showed that this was mostly due to a reduction in absence recorded as illness, particularly at primary. Though rates of absence and persistent absence remained some way above pre-pandemic norms.
In this post, we’ll see what happened in Spring Term.
As usual, we’ll be using data from our 10,000 Attendance Tracker schools – around 2,800 secondary and 7,500 primary schools.
Let’s start by plotting absence rates in each week so far this year, and compare with the equivalent weeks last year. We’ll add the pre-pandemic termly averages as dotted lines.
