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Some good news regarding school absences

Nigel Williams, 21 March 2013

On Tuesday 19th March 2013 the Department for Education released statistics for school absences for the year 2011/12. The two headline figures – overall absence rate and percentage of persistent absentees – both continued the downward trend of recent years. This looks encouraging. Is there a story behind the figures?

Arriving at school
Attendance at school is valuable in itself. State provision of education is a recognition that everybody’s education is of benefit to the whole of society. Reducing levels of absence helps derive the maximum value from that investment.
School absence can also be an important indicator of future neighbourhood problems. The Ministry of Justice published data about court appearances for 10 to 17 year-olds following the riots of August 2011. They looked at Free School Meals and Special Educational Needs but it was persistent absence from school that most closely followed the pattern of court appearances. The data are here. Tables 4.12 a and b are especially relevant.
There are different sorts of absence. The most serious from a social point of view is unauthorised absence beyond just arriving unavoidably late. Nevertheless, other forms of absence can have damaging social consequences and may be a symptom of some other malaise. For example, a long-term absence on health grounds may be caused by uncontrollable bullying at a school. Family holidays in term time and absence because no alternative provision has yet been made for an excluded pupil are both wastes of school resources and are good things to get under control.
The greater reductions reported for 2011/12 are in authorised absence. State funded primary and secondary schools have seen reductions greater than 20 per cent since four years previously. Special schools have also improved. As for unauthorised absence, rates in primary schools have increased but only at the last reported decimal place; any changes in state secondary and special schools are for the better.

In 2011, the definition of persistent absence was changed from 20 per cent to 15 per cent out of concern that schools may be addressing the target more than the problem. Yet the obvious places to hide difficult cases are also showing improvement, offering no evidence that people are playing the system. Table 5.5 itemises special educational needs.  Many statemented children are also susceptible to the health problems that cause the persistent absence that is harder to avoid. That is more often than not authorised. The numerically greatest problem category, especially for unauthorised absence, is ‘behaviour, emotional and social difficulties’. The number of enrolled pupils in this category has fallen since 2007/08 and so have the rates of both authorised and unauthorised absence. Unauthorised absences were 4.55 per cent of morning or afternoon sessions for 144,030 enrolments in 2007/08 and 3.9 per cent for 123,920 enrolments in 2011/12. There is no sign of putting difficult pupils into this category in order to explain difficult statistics. Rather it looks like a genuine and welcome reduction.
The unauthorised absence remains the greatest concern and the interaction with high risk factors, such as urban environment, special needs and high levels of benefit receipts will reward careful monitoring. Given the success in bringing the absence rates down, it looks as if someone in Education is doing that already.

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