Almost all schools have seen their attendance worsen over the course of the pandemic. In the chart below, just 267 primary schools (out of over 15,500) have seen their attendance rates improve (indicated by orange points). For secondary schools, just 27 (out of the just over 3,000 in our data) have better overall attendance rates in 2021-2022.

In general, schools with higher absence rates before the pandemic have seen bigger increases in their absences, post-pandemic. However, within this picture, there is still substantial variation. Even ignoring outliers, a school with pre-pandemic absences between 5% and 6% might now be facing absences of anywhere from 5% to 15%.

There is very little relationship between key school characteristics (size, location, composition) and the change in absence between pre- and post-pandemic periods.

Schools with higher proportions of pupils on FSM or higher levels of pupils with SEN have higher rates of overall absence, persistent and severe absence, but there is no apparent relationship between FSM and SEN level and change in absence between 2018-2019 and 2022-2023.

So, key school characteristics appear to have had little bearing on how they have coped with the rising tide of absence. We have identified a small number of schools with similar characteristics that have experienced vastly different changes in absence rates. Examining eight secondary schools of similar size that also have FSM, SEN and EAL rates within 10% of each other, we find overall absence rates and persistent absence rates of some schools almost double that of others, while severe absence rates differ by a factor of eight. These are only headline characteristic measures, and the true demographic picture of these schools will be more nuanced. Nevertheless, this comparison, and the discovery that a small number of schools have improved attendance over the last four years, suggests there are valuable lessons to be learnt about the influence of individual school policies and approaches on reducing absence.