11.42% Absent On The Last Friday: DfE's Full-Year Attendance Data

It is the second week of September. You have 30 in the register, and you have 30 in the room. You look out at the desks, and every single pupil is just sitting there. Well, enjoy it. I mean, that is a pretty bleak thing to say to someone standing in front of a full class, right? It is not bleak, actually. It is the data. Okay. The academic year that just finished had a defined mathematical shape. The Department for Education published the whole year in August. And, you know, that shape dictates that your full room right now is the top of a curve, not the normal state of affairs.

This is the education commute. Both voices on this show are synthesized. The judgment isn't. So I am sitting in the class teacher's chair today because when you stand at the front of your room to deliver your instruction, you notice the empty seats, right? You look at the physical space and you see exactly who is missing on any given Tuesday morning. Right. Exactly. You do not see the percentage behind them. You just see the absent child. And I am in the attendance leads chair. I mean, I pull the weekly release every time it lands on the desk.

And the release that landed on the 6th of August, that is the whole of last year, contained in one single table. One table for the whole year. Right. So today is an autopsy of a year that is already over. And we are doing this autopsy strictly for the sake of the one that has just started. Well, let us start with the ending then. Before we look at the progression of the weeks, tell me what the final data from the Department for Education actually says about the year that just finished.

Sure. So the ending is the headline, right? The 25 to 26 figures give us three distinct facts. First, overall absence was 6 .93%. 6 .93%. Yeah. Second, attendance was 93 .07%. And third, persistent absence, which is the exact share of pupils who missed a tenth or more of their sessions, was 19 .05%. Wait, 19 .05 %? Yes. That figure requires careful attention. Because if we calculate what 19 % means for your specific class of 30, well, it means nearly one in five of your pupils. Exactly.

We can call it five or six children. Five or six children will end the year having missed at least a tenth of it. That is exactly what the national shape dictates. I mean, it will not necessarily be the five or six specific children you suspect on your specific register, but five or six across any standard class size. I want to really focus on the reality of missing a tenth of their sessions. Right. Because the Department for Education records attendance in morning and afternoon sessions. Right. If a child is in that 19 .

05 % group. They're absent for 10 % of all those sessions across the year. Yes, a full 10th. You prepare your instruction for 30 pupils. You sequence the math curriculum. You sequence the phonics. You sequence the science lessons. But by the time the academic year concludes, five or six of the children on your register have not been in the room for a full 10th of the content you delivered. And if you look at the year before, the trend is not good. How does it compare? The figures went up.

Absence rose 0 .06 of a percentage point on the year before. Just 0 .06. Right. But persistent absence rose 0 .35. Yeah. Moving from 18 .7 to 19 .05. I want to look at the exact numerical difference between those two increases. Yeah. Because that divergence is really important. It is. The overall absence only rose by 0 .06. I mean, that is a tiny fraction of a single percentage point. Yeah. But the persistent absence rose by 0 .35. That tells me the overall average is hiding the reality.

Oh, it absolutely hides the reality. The headline figure of 6 .93 % overall absence obscures the actual distribution of the absences. The 19 .05 % persistent absence figure is the mathematical reality you deal with in the classroom. You do not experience a flat 6 .93 % absence distributed perfectly and equally across all 30 children. No, because if you did, every child would just miss a few random days. Exactly. Instead, you experienced specific children missing a tenth or more of their sessions, and that specific group grew by 0 .

35. The trend moved in the wrong direction, and the persistent figure moved more than the headline. Okay, so if that is the ending, and those are the final figures for the year, we need to trace the exact shape that gets you there. Yeah. Because a year does not just arrive at an average. Right. It fluctuates. Yeah. What does the data show from September onwards? Well, we look at the autumn term first. Absence climbs steadily through the autumn term, and it peaks at 8 .89 % before Christmas.

8 .89%. Right. The percentage simply increases week by week until it hits that specific peak right before the end of the term. Then the calendar turns. In the first week of the spring term, the absence rate drops to 6 .88. Okay, I need to stop you there and push back on how schools discuss this. The rate drops to 6 .8. We frequently hear staff talk about the January dip, right? As if January is the time of high absence and low attendance. Yeah. But you are saying the absence rate falls from 8 .

89 % down to 6 .88%. Yes. That is a two -point drop in absence. It is. The first week of January is a two -point recovery, not a new problem. That totally contradicts the standard conversation in the staff room. I mean, when you look at an absence rate falling from 8 .89 % down to 6 .88%, you literally have more children sitting in the physical classroom in January than you did in December. You do. So the January dip is actually a significant recovery in attendance. Why does it drop?

What causes that recovery? Look, the release from the Department for Education does not say why, and neither will I. Fair enough. We are strictly analyzing the shape of the numbers. We can see the deepest point of a recovery, and then we see the data drift through the remainder of the spring term, and then we reach the summer term. Well, summer is surely the good bit. You have late evenings, you have sports days, you have school trips, the building is warm, the absence rate should be very low.

Actually, summer is the worst week of the year. Wait, really? Yeah. During the week beginning the 13th of July, which is the last week detailed in the release, absence was 9 .01%. 9 .01%. That is higher than the autumn peak of 8 .89 % before Christmas. It is higher. But then we look at the Friday of that exact same week. On the Friday of the week, beginning on the 13th of July, absence hit 11 .42. 11 .42. I mean, that is more than one in 10 children absent from the room.

It is one in nine absent on the last Friday before the holidays. Wow. And to understand the shift, we can contrast that Friday with the Tuesday of the very same week. On Tuesday, the absence was 7 .83%. 7 .83 % on Tuesday. Yes. That is the identical group of 30 children on the register. The building is identical. The staff is identical. But between Tuesday and Friday, just four days apart, the absence rate increases from 7 .83 % to 11 .42%. Exactly. You have a relatively standard absence rate on Tuesday, but by Friday morning, more than one in 10 seats are physically empty.

That is the mathematical reality of the 13th of July week. The register documents the shift day by day. All right, here is my push. against these national figures? Because I know what a listener is thinking right now. What is that? A national average combines thousands of different settings. Right. You're going to say, my school isn't the average. We are a small primary in a village. Why should the shape of the whole country tell me anything about my 30 pupils? Because the release splits the data and the split matters significantly more than the national average.

Okay, let us hear the splits. Let us look at the sector split first. Primary absence for the year was 5 .31. Secondary was 8 .57. Special was 13 .19. 5 .31 for primary. Okay, so my primary number is better than the national headline of 6 .93%. Right. If I am in a primary classroom, I might think the situation is more manageable than the national figure suggests. Well, your sector's overall average is lower, yes. But then the data splits again, and this is the specific split a class teacher must hear.

Okay. Pupils eligible for free school meals sit at an absence of 10 .87. Everyone else sits at 5 .26. 10 .87 versus 5 .26. Yes. That is double. Yes, it is. I want to make sure we are entirely clear on what that means for the physical classroom. 5 .26 % against 10 .87. Right. The data from the Department for Education states that the children eligible for free school meals have an absence rate. twice as high as the children sitting next to them who are not eligible.

That is exactly what the numbers state. And the SEN split is just as distinct. Let us hear it. Pupils with an EHCP are 13 .64. Pupils on SEN support are 10 .07. Pupils with no identified SEN are 5 .8. So if we look at the EHCP figure of 13 .64 against the no identified SEN figure of 5 .8, we are seeing the exact same phenomenon. The national average of 6 .93 % merges completely different statistical outcomes. It does. We have children experiencing highly elevated rates of absence sitting on the exact same register as children with very low rates.

Correct. I get to do something important from this. What is that? The shape of the year isn't really that the whole class gets worse before Christmas and then recovers. The shape is that the exact same handful of children carry most of the absence. regardless of the month. You are exactly right. That is why the 19 .05 % persistent absence figure matters far more than the 6 .93 % headline. Yeah, that makes sense. The January dip recovers by definition. The overall absence drops from 8 .89 back to 6 .

88, but persistent absence is the group it doesn't recover for. The children in that persistent group accumulate their absences across the entire academic year. So if that is the statistical reality, what do I actually do with my full register in September? Like, what is the immediate action I take when I have 30 in the room right now? You write down exactly who is below 90 % by the October half term. Just by high school? Yes. You do not wait until Christmas. You do it by half term.

If a child is at 92 in October, they are heading for the 19%. Oh, because the autumn peak is coming. Exactly. If a pupil is already down to 92 % by October half term, they have missed sessions early in the sequence. When the absence rate climbs to that 8 .9 % peak before Christmas, the mass dictates they will drop below the 90 % threshold and join the persistent absence group. Exactly. Let us apply this idea to three specific settings, starting with the primary room. In a primary setting, The context is the free school meals split, 5 .

26 against 10 .87. If your conversation in October is just about the class as a single entity, it misses the half of the room where the absence actually is. Right, because you cannot target an intervention at a whole class average of 5 .31 when the reality is a 10 .87 % absence rate for a specific demographic on your register. You must look at the specific pupils. Precisely. Now, in a secondary school room, the context is the last week of term. The rate is 9 % for the week and 11 on the Friday.

Yeah. If the timetable collapses into videos and tidying during that final week. The pupils have already noticed and the register says so. Right. If the structured instructional content ceases, the physical presence ceases. The 11 .42 % absence rate on that Friday perfectly correlates with the activity provided in the building. Exactly. And in a specialist setting, the context is the baseline sector figure. 13 .19 % is the sector figure for special schools. Okay. 13 .19%. Right. So a child at 90 % in a special school is doing better than the national average for their setting, and the conversation with their family should say that first.

Ah, I see. You have to evaluate the 90 % attendance rate against that specific 13 .19 % sector figure, not against the national 6 .93%. Yes. The conversation with the family must start with the correct contextual data. Look, let us bring this back to my 30 in the room and the colleagues I work with. To summarize the reality of your 30, 30 in the room in September is the top of the curve. Right. Five or six of them will miss a tenth of the year. The January dip is not the story.

And the last Friday in July is emptier than any Monday. The only number you have the ability to move is the one you write down by the October half term. OK, here is a task for the listener at break time. Go and ask whoever is standing next to the kettle if they know which of their specific pupils were below 90 percent last year. That is a good question. Because before this year's register starts compiling new data, you have to know who was in that 19 point.

0 .05 % last year to identify who is heading toward it by the October half term this year. Absolutely. And I will pose a second question to the listener. Go on. If a governor asked you to put your school's persistent absence figure next to the national 19 .05%, could you do it or would you be guessing? Well, I would check the physical register first. Guessing is an entirely insufficient response when the data from the Department for Education is this exact. All right, four things off the drive.

One, last year for the whole country, absence was 6 .93%, persistent absence was 19 .05, and both got slightly worse. Two, the shape of the year. Autumn peaks at 8 .8, nine before Christmas. The first week of January is a recovery to 6 .8, and the last week of July is the worst week at 9 .01. 11 .42 on the Friday. Three, the split is the story. Free school meals, double the absence, 10 .87 versus 5 .26. Pupils with an EHCP are 13 .64. Special schools are 13 .

19. And four, the action you take. Write down who is below 90 % by October half term. The dip fixes itself, the 19 % doesn't. Everything is linked for you. We are the trailer, not the film. Both voices on this show are synthesized. The judgment isn't. Safe trip in. See you at the gates.