Recommendation 12

The Department told us that illness, rather than unauthorised absence, was the biggest driver of the increase in absence, particularly persistent absence. It noted that this year’s figures were for the autumn term only, when there had been quite a lot of illness. A pupil would only need to have missed seven days during the term to be classed as persistently absent, and quite a lot of people who got flu would have been off for seven days.23 The Department said that the data showed that attendance was lower on Fridays than on other days of the week, and a little lower on Mondays, but did not indicate why. It also noted that anecdotally this pattern had also existed before the pandemic.24