Statement on the release of Pupil absence in schools in England for 2024/2025

New national statistics published this week by the Department for Education on pupil absence in schools show encouraging signs of progress. Overall absence and persistent absence rates (where a child misses more than 10% of their schooling) are falling compared to last year. However, there’s still a very concerning trend: severe absence (when a child misses more than 50% of their schooling) continues to rise, and overall attendance remains significantly below pre-pandemic levels.

Severe absence increased again to 2.26% of pupils, continuing a worrying upward trajectory.  Absence rates remain far higher than before the pandemic, when severe absence stood at just 0.85% in 2028/2019 which means we’ve seen a 166% increase in severe absence compared to pre-pandemic levels. 

SHS CEO Nick Marsh said: 

“It’s encouraging to see that overall absence and persistent absence are starting to fall,  a sign that the collective efforts of the government, schools, families and support services are beginning to make a difference.

Despite the welcome decrease in persistent absence, the scale of the issue remains stark. Around 1.34 million children are still persistently absent from school, missing essential days, months, and in some cases even years of their education. 

We cannot ignore the fact that severe absence is still stubbornly rising, and we remain a long way from pre-pandemic levels of school attendance. More than 176,000 pupils are now severely absent, highlighting the growing and urgent need for targeted, intensive support for the most vulnerable families.

The Government’s recent Schools White Paper is a step in the right direction but we must go further and faster to reach the families who need us most, those whose children are severely absent from school. This is where our interventions are most effective.

Our team of whole-family support practitioners work in schools and alongside parents and carers as partners helping children get back into the classroom, ready to learn, with the right support around them.

In 2024/2025, we helped 1,077 children improve attendance, gaining 5,745 extra days of learning.

Severely absent children supported by School-Home Support improved their attendance by an average of 29%, which is equivalent to an extra 58 days in school. An additional term of learning at school.”