There is “an urgent need to rapidly improve” secondary school attendance across Wales, according to a report published today by the school inspection body Estyn.
The report, Improving attendance in secondary schools, says that “attendance figures across Wales have not recovered quickly enough to pre-pandemic levels” and that variation in attendance between schools is “a notable concern”.
According to the report, the proportion of students persistently absent - those with attendance rates below 80 per cent - varies from 2.7 per cent to 42.6 per cent in secondaries across Wales.
Overall, the attendance rate in secondary schools in Wales fell by 6.3 percentage points between 2018-2019 and 2022-2023 - but that varied from a fall of 1.3 percentage points in one school to nearly 18 percentage points in the secondary with the biggest drop.
The report also notes that “rates of attendance have not improved this year and have remained stubbornly low”, although data for primary schools “showed an improving trend”.
The Estyn report highlights that schools that had high expectations and that monitored attendance data were more likely to bring about improvements.
It also highlights the influence that “the timing of school terms and holidays has on attendance”.
School leaders reported that when terms were long - for example, the autumn term lasting until late in December - students’ attendance declined in the last few weeks of term.
Cost of transport was also identified in the report as “a common reason why pupils, particularly those from low-income households, did not attend school”.
Weather affects school absence
The report also states: “School leaders had identified that during months where there is increased rainfall and darker mornings and evenings, pupils who usually walk to school, especially those who are eligible for free school meals, generally did not attend as often.”
It says the Welsh government should consider how students living within a three-mile radius of school who are not eligible for free transport could be better supported to attend school more regularly, and how reform of the school year “might better support pupils to attend school more regularly”.
The Welsh government is consulting on cutting the six-week summer holiday by a week in order to give staff and pupils two weeks off in October.
The Estyn report also calls for attendance data to be published more regularly by the government to inform “a national campaign to promote the importance of good attendance”, and also to allow funding to be allocated more effectively to support schools to improve attendance.
The report says: “Schools would welcome longer-term, ring-fenced funding to address this important national priority.”
The impact of budget cuts
School leaders’ body NAHT Cymru said cuts to budgets had an impact on schools’ capacity to intervene when attendance was poor. Posts such as family-liaison officers were under threat, it said, if they had not been cut already.
NAHT national secretary Laura Doel said “serious investment” in a multi-agency approach was required. Mental health support, for example, was “extremely limited following over a decade of neglect and underfunding of public services”, she added.
“As Estyn points out, local authorities and Welsh government have a big part to play in solving this problem - schools can’t be left alone to try and fix it,” said Ms Doel.
The Estyn report is based on a sample of 41 schools, all local authorities and evidence from secondary inspection and follow-up findings since February 2022. It includes analysis of the recently published national attendance data, which showed that the proportion of secondary students persistently absent from school last year trebled to 16.3 per cent.
‘Urgent need’ for action
Today’s Estyn report says: “This research, along with national data on attendance, indicates a concerning picture and highlights an urgent need to rapidly improve secondary school-age attendance across Wales.”
Students are classified as being persistently absent in the report if their attendance is below 80 per cent. Recently, however, the Welsh government changed its definition of persistent absence: now the threshold for persistent absence is below 90 per cent.
