Post-pandemic pupil absences have remained stubbornly high
18th April 2023 by Timo Hannay [link]
Update 28th April 2023: See also this coverage from Schools Week.
Update 20th April 2023: See this coverage from The Economist.
Between pandemic-induced lockdowns and teacher strikes, children have missed an awful lot of school over the last three years. So you might hope that when schools are actually open, attendance would be as good, if not better, than usual. If so then your hopes were dashed by the latest full-year pupil absence data released by the DfE. (The same data are also available in SchoolDash Insights, where subscribers can explore it in the 'Pupils' section).
This post provides an overview of some of the trends to be found there. In summary:
- Having been stable for many years, pupil absence shot up during the 2021-2022 academic year by over 60% in secondary schools and more than 70% in primary schools to reach a total of nearly 190 million missed school sessions, up from about 110 million in previous years. Initial signs are that these historically high levels of absence have also been maintained into the current school year.
- This has primarily been due to increases in authorised illness absences and unauthorised absences for unknown reasons, though authorised study leave and exclusions also rose, at least among secondary schools.
- The increase in absences due to illness happened in every part of England and across all types of school, but tended to be lower in London and at schools with greater proportions of poor and ethnic-minority pupils, especially among secondary schools. They were also lower at schools with better Ofsted ratings.
- At the same time, cases of 'persistent' and 'severe' absenteeism rose, with the former increasing roughly twofold among all schools to nearly a quarter of pupils and the latter doubling among secondary schools to just under 3% (corresponding to almost 90,000 pupils), though it declined among primary schools.
- These rises in absenteeism were also seen in every region and type of school, but once again schools in London and those with larger ethnic-minority populations or better Ofsted ratings tended to show smaller increases. In contrast to the trends seen for absences due to illness, persistent absenteeism increased by more in poorer schools and local areas.
- How long these effects will persist remains to be seen, but it is already clear that some of them are exacerbating historial disparities such as those between schools in London and the rest of England, or between schools with different Ofsted ratings. Policies and interventions intended to address absenteeism and its consequences need to take this into account.
Absence-minded
Figure 1 shows school absence rates between 2017 (corresponding to the 2016-2017 academic year) and 2022 (ie, the last full academic year in 2021-2022). Most of the data are expressed as percentages of sessions, where 'session' means a morning or afternoon at school. (A full school day is composed of two sessions and any given pupil might be registered as present or absent for either of them.) The black line shows trends for all schools, which is broken down into primary schools (red line) and secondary schools (blue line).
Overall absence rates were very stable between 2017 and 2021 at about 4% of sessions in primary schools and just over 5% of sessions in the secondary schools. (Data for 2020 are missing due to the pandemic.) But in 2022 they leapt up by around 3 percentage points, a rise of around 65%-75%. Why?
Diving deeper into the reasons given for these absences can help to answer that question. For a start it is clear that the rise is composed of both authorised and unauthorised absences. Among authorised absences, illness composed the lion's share, with increases in exclusions and study leave also contributing small amounts, at least among secondary schools. There was also an increase in authorised absences for no given reason, especially among primary schools. Medical appointments and authorised holidays rose too, but not to above normal pre-pandemic levels. Absences for religious observance and other reasons actually fell compared to 2021. Among unauthorised absences, there were rises in lateness, absences for unknown reasons and absences for no given reason, but the biggest effect was in the catch-all 'other' reasons category.
(Use the menus below to select an absence measure. Click on the figure legend to hide or view individual phases. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values and sample sizes.)
Figure 1: Pupil absence at mainstream state primary and secondary schools in England
It is important to note that during 2021 there were also very high levels of absence due to COVID-19 and, to a much lesser extent, other exceptional reasons, which are captured separately in the statistics for 2021 and 2022. It's possible that the high number of COVID-19 absences in 2021 masked rises in other forms of absence, either because this category was used for more than just confirmed cases of coronavirus, or simply because so many pupils were at home with COVID that there were fewer left to be absent for other reasons. Conversely, the huge fall in absence due to COVID in 2022 and simultaneous rise in illness absences may indicate that case of COVID were simply being recorded under general illness, particularly once COVID testing was no longer widespread.
Figure 1 also shows levels of 'persistent' absenteeism (defined as missing 10% or more of sessions and expressed as a percentage of pupils), which rose roughly twofold across all schools, as well as 'severe' absenteeism (missing 50% or more of sessions), which fell among primary schools but nearly doubled among secondary schools to around 2.7%, which corresponds to almost 90,000 pupils. Note that these figures do not included absences due to COVID or other 'exceptional' reasons.
Though 2022 was the first full year unaffected by widespread COVID-related school closures, it is clear that school attendance did not return to anything like normal pre-pandemic levels. But was this a one-off blip or the harbinger of a new long-term trend? Figure 2 provides a glimpse into the current school year, based on experimental weekly absence data from the Department for Education. It is important to note that these are provisional estimates based on data from a sample of around 65% of schools, not final numbers. Also, comparing the first six months of the school year with previous whole school years is not a like-for-like comparison (though it's not obvious whether this is more likely to lead to underestimates or overestimates: see Footnote 1). On the other hand, they are still informative, so we will take a look.
Overall absence rates in the current school year, have shown a traditional short-term pattern: relatively low levels at the start of the autumn term rising steeply in the run-up to Christmas before returning to a relatively stable level in the spring term. But more interesting for our current purposes are the absolute levels, which, Christmas aside, were around 5-6% in primary schools and 8-10% in secondary schools. In other words, much closer to the elevated 2022 levels than to pre-pandemic norms. So the higher absence levels seem to be persisting.
Unpacking these a bit, both authorised and unauthorised absences were higher than their respective pre-pandemic levels. Among authorised absences, illness was still by far the largest contributor and was also higher than before the pandemic. Other forms of authorised absence – exclusions, study leave, medical appointments, authorised holidays, religious observances and other reasons – were each relatively minor contributors, but in general showed similar patterns to 2022. Among unauthorised absences, lateness rose during the course of the school year (which is usual), but reached even higher levels than those seen in 2022, at least among secondary schools (which isn't). Unknown reasons were also very high, though that may be simply because these are provisional statistics, so reasons for some absences may have yet to be recorded. The bigger category of unauthorised absences for 'other' reasons was also very high, even by comparison with 2022.
(Use the menus below to select an absence measure. Click on the figure legend to hide or view individual phases. Hover over the lines to see corresponding data values and sample sizes.)
Figure 2: Weekly pupil absence at mainstream state primary and secondary schools in England (2022-2023)
Not all there
Looking again at the longer-term annual trends since 2017, Figure 3 shows how the different types of absence stack up in terms of numbers of sessions missed. Among primary schools, illness was the main driver, with other contributions from authorised absences with no reason given and lateness, as well as 'other' unauthorised absences and those with no reason given. (Show all types of absence again.)
The picture is broadly similar for secondary schools, where illness was also the most common reason, while authorised absences with no reason given, lateness, 'other' unauthorised absences and unauthorised absences with no reason given also played a role. Exclusions and study leave contributed too. (Show all types of absence again.)
(Use the menu to switch between all schools, primary schools and secondary schools. Click on the figure legend to turn individual categories on or off; double-click to show one on its own. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 3: Pupil absence at mainstream state primary and secondary schools in England
Figure 4 applies the same analysis to the sampled weekly absence data for the current school year. Naturally, the numbers of sessions are smaller than in the annual data because (a) they are spread across the 39 weeks of a normal school year, and (b) they include only about 65% of schools. Among all schools, the annual pre-pandemic level of about 110 million missed sessions translates into an average of about 2.8 million sessions a week, while the 2022 level of almost 190 million sessions equates to about 4.8 million a week. Note that this doesn't take into account the fact that we have weekly data from only 65% of schools (among other things, we can't be sure that they also represent 65% of pupils, perhaps it's more). Even so, the total absences shown in Figure 4 are much closer to 2022 levels than to pre-pandemic levels. Once again, among both primary schools and secondary schools illness absences have been by far the biggest contributor to missed sessions.
(Use the menu to switch between all schools, primary schools and secondary schools. Click on the figure legend to turn individual categories on or off; double-click to show one on its own. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 4: Weekly pupil absence at mainstream state primary and secondary schools in England (2022-2023)
Home sick
If absences due to illness have been the biggest source of increase, how were these distributed across different parts of the country and types of school? Figure 5 provides some answers. It compares the proportions of sessions missed through pupil illness in 2021 (red columns) with those in 2022 (blue columns) for various groups of schools.
The resulting patterns are most clearly seen among secondary schools. For example, when looking by region it is clear that the increase in London was considerably smaller than in other parts of the country. More generally, increases were smaller in schools and locations with higher levels of deprivation, as well as schools with higher proportions of ethnic-minority and EAL (English as an additional language) pupils. The increase was also smaller in faith schools, urban schools and schools with higher Ofsted ratings. Many (though not all) of these characteristics are prevalent among London schools, so it's not completely clear whether these types of schools tend do well because they they are disproportionately likely to be in London, or whether London does well because it has more than its fair share of those kinds of schools. Note also that in some cases there were already differences among these groups in 2021 and the increases seen in 2022 simply magnified those pre-existing disparities.
Primary schools showed some similar, if usually much weaker trends by region, ethnicity, EAL, faith status and Ofsted rating, but not by school or local deprivation level and the trend by level of urbanisation is at best weak.
(Use the menus to switch between different phases ad school groupings. Click on the figure legend to turn individual years on or off. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 5: Authorised illness absences by school type
When persistence doesn't pay
Another conspicuous change in 2021 was the huge rise in pupils who were 'persistently' absent from school (defined as those missing 10% or more of school sessions). Figure 6 compares the proportions of these pupils in 2021 (red columns) with those in 2022 (blue columns), grouping schools in the same way as Figure 5 above.
Once again the trends are clearest for secondary schools and here too we see a relatively modest increase in London compared to other regions. There were also smaller increases for schools with larger ethnic-minority and EAL populations and among faith schools. There were relatively small increases, too, among schools with high Ofsted ratings, though only in rough proportion to the disparities that already existed in 2021. Some other trends ran in the opposite direction to those seen above for absences due to illness: if anything, persistent absence increased more at secondary schools with higher levels of in-school or local deprivation. So the two do not necessarily go hand in hand
Primary schools showed both similarities and differences to secondaries. They, too, experienced smaller increases among schools with lower levels of in-school or local deprivation, as well as faith schools and those with higher Ofsted ratings. However, regional trends were more ambiguous and the trends for ethnic-minority and EAL pupils ran in the opposite direction: increases in persistent absenteeism were greater for schools with higher proportions of these pupils.
Figure 6: Persistent pupil absenteeism by school type
As you weren't
For so many aspects of the education system, from academic attainment and pupil wellbeing to use of edtech and school recruitment, the new post-pandemic normal is nothing like the old one. To that list we can now add attendance.
What is driving the sharp increase in pupil absences due to illness: A genuine rise in childhood sickness, driven in part by a new endemic disease? More relaxed attitudes among parents in allowing their children to stay at home (perhaps influenced by the fact that more of them are now working from home too)? The proven capacity of schools to provide online alternatives to in-person teaching? It's impossible to be certain, but the most likely explanation appears to be a combination of these factors. At the very least, the persistence of the rise suggests that it's not all caused by waves of infections. And the fact that it's more common in affluent areas and at underperforming schools hints that some parents might have recalibrated the relative risks and benefits of sending their children to school versus keeping them at home.
The rise in persistent and severe absences are intriguing too. Given that, unlike absences due to illness, these tend to skew towards poorer schools and communities, it's tempting to speculate that they might have less to do with preferences for studying from home and more to do with educational disaffection.
The worst of the pandemic may have passed, but its legacy lives on. The historically sky-high levels of pupil absence are one way in which the education system as a whole continues to suffer from its own version of long COVID. As described above, these are affecting schools everywhere, but not always in the same way or to the same degree. Policies an interventions need to take into account not only the historical disparities with which we have become so familiar, but also the unequal effects of these new and ongoing disruptions. We hope that this analysis provides a useful perspective on their characteristics. It is a subject to which we will no doubt return.
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Footnotes:
