School leaders call for more support as school absence rates rise in first week of 2025 term
by Educate Magazine January 23, 2025 · All News / Education News
The absence rate in the first week of term commencing 6 January has increased compared to the equivalent week in the last academic year (8 January 2024), according to new data by the Department for Education (DfE).
The overall absence rate in the Department for Education’s first weekly school attendance figures of 2025 was 6.9 per cent – 0.3 percentage points higher compared to last year’s figures in the same week. This was driven by a 0.2 percentage point increase in unauthorised absence.
Parents can only allow a child to miss school if either: they are too ill to go in or they have advance permission from the school. There may be other exceptional circumstances where parents can ask to take their child out of school.
If a child is not ill, does not have advance permission, and does not have an approved exceptional circumstance, yet they are still absent, this will be classed as an unauthorised absence.
By school type, the absence rates across the 2024/25 academic year to date were:
– 5.2 per cent in state-funded primary schools (3.8 per cent authorised and 1.4 per cent unauthorised)
– 8.0 per cent in state-funded secondary schools (5.0 per cent authorised and 2.9 per cent unauthorised)
– 12.7 per cent in state-funded special schools (9.6 per cent authorised and 3.2 per cent unauthorised)
The rate of persistent absence (pupils who miss 10 per cent or more of their possible sessions) was 18.7 per cent in the week commencing commencing 6 January, which is a 1.6 percentage point decrease compared to the equivalent point last academic year.
Commenting on the statistics, Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “School leaders work hard to ensure pupils attend school, and while the unauthorised absence figures for this particular week show a small increase compared to last year, there is a slight improvement over the academic year to date.
“However, we have long argued that fining parents is a blunt tool which does not get to the root causes of non-attendance, and we did not believe that increasing these fines would shift the dial in any meaningful way.
“The last government failed to invest anything like enough in early support for families facing challenges in their lives including poverty and mental health.
