Absenteeism from secondary schools: September 2017 to August 2018

Main points

• In 2017/18, 6.2% of half-day school sessions were missed due to overall absence and 1.6% of half-day school sessions were missed due to unauthorised absence from maintained secondary, special and independent schools.
• In general, overall absence has been falling since 2007/08. In 2017/18, overall absenteeism increased by 0.3 percentage points since the previous year. Unauthorised absenteeism increased by 0.2 percentage points over 2017/18, but if you compare it with 2007/08, over nine years it has decreased by 0.2 percentage points.
• The percentage of persistent absentees in mainstream secondary schools increased by 0.1 percentage points in 2016/17. However, it is now less than half of what it was eight years ago, showing a drop of 5.2 percentage points from 9.3% in 2008/09 to 4.1% in 2017/18.
• Illness was the most common reason for absence in 2017/18.