In January we looked at some alternative measures of persistent absence which aimed to account for the impact of pupils taking time off with COVID, namely:
- Increasing the threshold for persistent absence to 20% of sessions missed
- Discounting up to 10 days of every pupil’s longest spell of absence
- A hybrid method based on long-term absence and repeated spells of absence
For Autumn Term, these methods produced figures of 7 to 9% for primary and 12% to 19% for secondary. Much lower than the figures of 25% and 34% respectively produced by the existing persistent absence measure, and not too far from pre-pandemic levels either.
Now that we’ve got an extra term of data, let’s see if things have changed.
