Pupils: Absenteeism

(asked on 12th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish data on the level of absence by children from schools for (a) any reason, (b) any reason of illness, including reasons related to covid-19 and (c) reasons related to covid-19 by (i) region, (ii) upper tier local authority, (iii) lower tier local authority and (iv) parliamentary constituency in each of the last 100 weeks for which figures are available.


Answered by
Robin Walker Portrait
Robin Walker
This question was answered on 17th January 2022

The department publishes a fortnightly COVID-19 attendance publication based on the educational settings status form. This data is intended to monitor the impact of COVID-19 on the number of pupils attending school. In this collection we do not collect the total number of students absent from school due to any reason of illness.

Data on pupil absence due to COVID-19 since the start of the 2021/22 academic year can be found on Explore Education Statistics. This data is published at local authority level. We do not publish data at parliamentary constituency level.

The most recent published data at national level is 6 January. For regional and local authority level data, the latest published data is 16 December. The most recent national, regional and local authority data can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic-23-march-2020-to-6-january-2022.

We also publish more detailed termly data on pupil absence as part of the school census (including absence rates where pupils are ill, including COVID-19). The latest publication can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england-autumn-2020-and-spring-2021.

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