Are UK pupils missing too much school?

What were pupil absence levels like in the last academic year and what are the stats telling us?

Some startling stats on UK school absences in 2024 included:

• Around 158,000 pupils in England’s schools missed at least half of their classes in the autumn and spring team
• In Knowsley more than quarter of pupils missed 10% or more of their classes
• In Blackpool, Bradford, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Bristol, Torbay, Plymouth and Cornwall, 23-25% pupils also missed 10% or more of their classes 1, 2
• 184,845 pupils in Scotland’s schools missed at least 10 percent of the school year
•  71,852 pupils in Scotland’s schools missed at least 20 percent of the school year 3 *

*These figures from Scotland’s schools do not include data from three councils: West Lothian, Renfrewshire and Clackmannanshire.

What do these stats mean?

The stats aren’t as simple as ‘pupils are missing x percentage of their education’. Ofsted’s absence report shared some other elements that we need to bear in mind when looking at absence rates:

1. Home education – An estimated 92,000 children and young people learn at home.
2. Part-time timetables – Around 34,000 children/young people may not necessarily be educated at home but only attend school on a part-time basis. (This model can be used in circumstances such as returning to school after a pro-longed absence.)
3. Flexi-schooling – These children/young people attend school some days of the week and receive home education on others. (Often, this will be recorded as unauthorised absence, so its hard to know how many children exactly this impacts.)
4. Hybrid education – Some students may receive some of their education online and some in person. (This is more often used with children/young people with special educational needs, disabilities, behaviour needs or health needs.) 1

What’s behind these absences?

While the absences are of course a great concern – with pupils missing out on vital education, soft skill development and social interaction – the bigger worry is why we are seeing these high absence rates. Unless we can understand why pupils are missing school, we can’t turn this around, and the absences could be pointing to any number of concerning issues happening in school or at home. Also, do these figures discriminately impact particular groups of children and young people? For example, are absences disproportionate to the number of pupils with special educational needs? We can already see from some of the stats mentioned that there are regional differences in persistent absences, so is stands to reason there could be other disproportionate impacts.

References

1. BBC News (2024) ‘Ofsted ‘alarmed’ by absences and ‘flexi-schooling”. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy7kd5km5jlo (Accessed: 09 January 2025)
2. BBC News (2025) ‘More than 20% of pupils ‘missing too much school”. Available at:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd9xz3p85ylo (Accessed: 09 January  2025)
3. The Scotsman (2025) ‘More than 180,000 Scots pupils missing a day of school every fortnight’. Available at: https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/more-than-180000-scots-pupils-missing-a-day-of-school-every-fortnight-4930650 (Accessed: 09 January 2025)