The new academic year kicked off with the Secretary of State for Education taking advantage of a quiet news day and entreating parents and carers to make sure their children attended school.
But is an absence in the first week of term any more predictive of persistent absence than an absence at any other time of year?
And isn’t absence in the first few weeks of the new academic year lower than at other times of the year anyway? Our previous work would suggest so.
In this article we probe both of these questions using data for last year.
Data
We use data for 10,000 state schools in England which used FFT Attendance Tracker in 2024/25.
Using this data, we identify:
- Pupils who were persistently absent for the whole academic year 2024/25, i.e. missed 10% or more of sessions
- Pupils who were absent for at least one session[1] each week
Persistent absence in 2024/25
15% of pupils in primary school and 25% of pupils in secondary school were persistently absent in 2024/25.
Rates of persistent absence were highest among pupils in Years 9 to 11.
Absence in week one
We classify pupils who were absent in week one as follows:
- Those who were ill for at least one session (around 31% of cases in both primary and secondary)
- Those who were absent for unauthorized reasons for at least one session and who were not ill (around 50% of cases in both primary and secondary)
- All other pupils absent at least once (around 19% of cases in both primary and secondary).
As the chart below shows, pupils who were absent in week one were more likely than other pupils to be persistently absent for the whole year. This was especially so for secondary-aged pupils in group 2 (unauthorized absence).
Is absence in the first week of term any more predictive of persistent absence than absence at any other time?
In the chart below, we show the percentage of pupils with 1 or more session of absence each week who were persistently absent for the whole year.
In general on any given week, around 50% to 60% of secondary-aged pupils absent at least once will be persistent absentees over the whole school year.
In primary this figure tends to be between 30% and 40%.
Put another way, being absent in the first week doesn’t appear to be any more predictive of persistent absence than absence in any other week of the year.
That said, those absent in the first week of term have a higher risk of being severely absent for the whole school year.
This is especially the case for pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in the secondary sector.
Fewer children are absent in the first week of term than later in the school year
It’s understandable that Ministers would like to see children start the year as they mean to go on and attend to school.
However, proportionately fewer pupils were absent at least once in the first week of term than in any other term last year.
Rates of pupils being absent for at least 1 session tend to be highest at the end of the Autumn and Spring terms and in the weeks around the second May Bank Holiday.
Summing up
It’s undoubtedly true that pupils who are absent in the first week of term are more likely to be persistently absent than those who attend for the whole week.
But you can say that about pretty much any week.
However, and particularly in secondary schools, pupils who are absent in the first week of term are at higher risk of being severely absent for the whole year, particularly those with SEN. Or put another way, those with more complex needs are both more likely to be off in the first week of term and be severely absent.
In any event, attendance at the start of the academic year is less of a problem than at other times of the year. More pupils are likely to take time off in the last week of term.
- A session is a registration period. There are two every day (morning and afternoon).
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Very interesting analysis as always.
The point on more children being absent in the last weeks of term is interesting, but I would argue less important. There is often little actual learning during those weeks and a higher rate of extracurricular activities.
What potentially is more important are the weeks where there is learning (earlier on in the term) and where being absent is more likely to disrupt learning and learning flow. Also, children who miss these session early/mid-term are more likely to be severely absent (shown by your chart, although at a decreasing rate).
Have you done any analysis on time periods children are absent thought out terms and the impact pm attainment?
Thanks Jake. No, we’ve not looked at relationship between the timing of spells of absence and attainment. Could be interesting- though would be correlational rather than causal, of course.