There are no signs of “stubbornly high” absence rates coming down this year, despite a renewed government drive to improve attendance, data experts have warned.

FFT Education Datalab has analysed information from its attendance tracker to look at absence across 10,000 schools for the first half term of the 2025-26 academic year.

Its tracker allows it to analyse national patterns in attendance ahead of official Department for Education statistics being published.

It has found that data for this academic year’s weekly attendance rates show an “almost identical pattern to last year at both primary and secondary”.

In a blog post published today, FFT statistician Katie Beynon says: “Absence at primary was high in the first week of term, before falling and levelling off, then increasing again in the lead-up to the half-term break.

“At secondary, absence increased rapidly across September, before falling slightly, followed by a big increase in the week before the break.”

DfE drive to improve attendance

The overall percentage of sessions missed at both primary and secondary is the same so far this year as the same period last year: 4.7 per cent at primary and 7.3 per cent at secondary, the FFT analysis has found.

The blog also notes that there has been a very small reduction in illness-related absence at primary, but adds that this has been cancelled out by a small increase in non-illness-related authorised absence. In both cases, however, the size of the change was less than 0.1 percentage points.

The DfE has this week made a series of announcements aimed at improving attendance.

It has named a new raft of lead schools for its attendance and behaviour hubs and revealed that all schools will be given artificial-intelligence-powered attendance improvement targets.

And it has said that, because research had identified a significant attendance drop-off during key stage 3, schools will now “receive a best practice toolkit targeting these critical transition moments”.

All types of school absence ‘remain stubbornly high’

As part of the FFT’s new analysis, it looked at the attendance levels of students in Year 7 who are or have been eligible for free school meals. It again found no change in absence overall, or by type.

Disadvantaged Year 7 students remain around twice as likely to miss school for any reason as non-disadvantaged Year 7 students, and around three times as likely to miss school for unauthorised reasons, according to the blog.

Ms Beynon says: “Overall then there’s been no change in absence levels so far this year compared with last. All types of absence remain stubbornly high above pre-pandemic levels, particularly unauthorised absence at secondary.

“Perhaps somewhat concerningly, given the DfE’s focus on narrowing the disadvantage gap at the transition between Year 6 and 7, there doesn’t seem to have been any improvement here either.

“That’s not to say that the various initiatives to tackle absence haven’t worked. It’s just that we can’t see any evidence of them having worked yet.”

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