Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to fill gaps in school attendance data to inform catch up plans.

Since March the Department has been collecting daily attendance data from Schools and nurseries. The latest attendance data is published here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak/2020-week-42.

We have also introduced a new category of non-attendance for schools to use in the school census: ‘not attending in circumstances related to COVID-19’, to ensure that they record attendance accurately and consistently over this period.

In light of the disruption earlier in the year, the summer 2020 school census did not occur, and data for absence in the spring term 2019/20 was not collected. To reduce the burden on schools, the Department took a decision not to collect attendance data in the autumn 2020 school census relating to the summer 2019/2020 term.

Census data collection will resume in the spring 2021 census, collecting data on the autumn 2020/21 school term.