The numbers of young people who are persistently absent (those who miss more than 10% of sessions) have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic (rising from 10.9% in 2018/19 to 21.2% in 2022/23). Department for Education (DfE) data from October 2024 shows that the number of children who are persistently absent is now falling in primary, secondary and special schools, but remains at far higher than pre-covid levels.
Despite school absenteeism being a top priority for the DfE, the number of young people who are ‘severely absent’ (missing over 50% of sessions) continues to rise with 150,000 children classed as severely absent in 2022-23 (DfE, 2024).
This data suggests that something needs to change in how we are understanding and approaching the issue of school attendance.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have highlighted the inter-related systemic challenges affecting the education and lives of young people. Key challenges for schools include reduced funding; difficulties recruiting teachers (Weale, 2023); the need to support families living in poverty (Lucas & Julius, 2024). For many families, the cost-of-living crisis has increased housing insecurity (Shafan-Azhar & Bottomley, 2024) and made providing basic items such as food and transport to school a challenge (Burtonshaw & Dorrell, 2023). Although these challenges have been recognised (Education Select Committee, 2023) and some measures put in place at the young person and family levels, a more coordinated and flexible approach is needed to address wider issues (Shafan-Azhar & Bottomley, 2024).
“Attendance has always been a symptom, rather than a cause, a manifestation of complex issues across the education system and beyond.”
Given the challenges present within the education system and wider society it is unsurprising that school attendance difficulties are experienced disproportionately by certain groups. In the Autumn term 2024/25 although general rates for persistent non-attendance were 17.8%, this increased to 33.3% for pupils with Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) and 29.91% for pupils receiving free school meals (DfE, 2025). Similarly, 12.6% of pupils with probable mental health difficulties missed more than 15 days of school compared to a rate of 4% for those unlikely to have diagnosable mental health difficulties (NHS Digital, 2022).
For each young person experiencing persistent non-attendance there is likely to be a complex interplay of school and wider environmental factors that contribute to their attendance difficulties (Melvin, 2019). For instance, at the school level, reduced funding for creative subjects, reduced SEN support, difficulties retaining teachers, bullying and lack of school staff’s understanding are likely to contribute to disengagement, reduced sense of school belonging and lead to potential school non-attendance (McPherson et al., 2023; Toynbee, 2023). Wider factors such as poverty, discrimination, care status and caring responsibilities also increase the risk of attendance difficulties (Burtonshaw & Dorrell, 2023; Shafan-Azhar & Bottomley, 2024). Less affluent families and families who have elected to home educate have reported not feeling supported by school when their child has special needs, deteriorating mental health or is being bullied (Burtonshaw & Dorrell, 2023; Paulauskiate et al., 2022). For those young people whose difficulties are particularly acute, punitive attendance approaches such as fines and not authorising non-attendance due to mental health needs (Mind, 2021) are only likely to exacerbate difficulties further. Heyne et al., (2024) emphasise the need to rethink our approach to wider systemic issues beyond the CYP and family, such as inequality, school structures and how learning is delivered.
The volume of referrals for children and young people aged 17 and under, where the primary concern is anxiety, has increased by over double from 98,953 the year before Covid, to 204,526 in 2023-24 (Children’s Commissioner, 2024). The Children’s Mental Health Report given by the Children’s Commissioner also revealed that nearly 40,000 children and young people experience a wait of over 2 years into children’s mental health services. In addition to leaving young people unsupported, research from Young Minds has shown that waiting for treatment can put further strain on relationships and increase feelings of both isolation and of being misunderstood.
This has a knock-on effect for education and attendance in multiple ways. School staff have cited lack of access to CAMHS, specialist SEND assessments and Educational Psychologists as a main barrier to supporting students’ mental health (NEU, 2023). This can lead to school staff feeling largely responsible for supporting young people whilst they are on waiting lists for specialist support. At the same time, school staff are experiencing increased workloads and the education sector has suffered significant budget cuts. This can result in school staff having to put more resources into ‘crisis management’ rather than focusing on early identification which is key for attendance-related difficulties. These contextual factors can also increase the stress of school staff which is important to highlight as the mental health of school staff has been closely linked with the mental health of pupils (Glazzard and Rose, 2019).
When young people themselves have been asked about their experiences of persistent school non-attendance they have reported that school-based factors such as difficult peer group relationships, lack of staff support and negative experiences of transition and academic learning result in a reduced sense of school belonging. This reduced sense of school belonging is further maintained by the young person’s mental health needs and their own and other’s beliefs about attendance (Corcoran & Kelly, 2022). This is a different understanding of attendance difficulties than one where the young person’s anxiety (often deemed to be irrational) is thought to be the driver of non-attendance. Young people have instead reported that their difficulties within school were the trigger for their anxiety and if not addressed, led to more significant mental health needs.
These school based factors are increasingly prevalent at secondary school with a narrowing of the curriculum leading to many young people reporting that they find this phase of education stressful or alienating and that they feel less respected (McPherson et al., 2023). These intersecting factors are likely to have a cumulative impact over time making non-attendance a difficult cycle to break. Young people who have experienced significant mental health difficulties or burnout/fatigue (Keville et al., 2021) over a long period can become unable to attend school (Can’t Not Won’t; Fricker, 2023).
These challenges make it increasingly important to reconsider the meaning of attendance and focus on how we support young people to engage with both learning and being prepared for adulthood (Heyne et al., 2024). Engagement implies active involvement and investment in learning. This has implications for how we support all learners in school, and holistic frameworks such as WARMTH focus on the factors which facilitate engagement and offer a more inclusive approach. Engagement with learning also provides an alternative lens for thinking about how the curriculum can be offered more flexibly and approaches to well-being tailored to the needs of the local community (for instance, the use of trauma informed approaches) (Kearney & Graczyk, 2022). An engagement focus also encourages us to consider how we work with young people, their families and across services to support learning for those who need more flexible or individualised approaches in the short or long-term.
Burtonshaw, S. & Dorrell, E. (2023) Listening to, and learning from, parents in the attendance crisis. Public First.
Corcoran, S. & Kelly, C. (2022) A meta-ethnographic understanding of children and young people’s experiences of extended school non-attendance. JORSEN 23(1), 24-37. DOI: 10.1111/1471-3802.12577
Department for Education (2025) Pupil absence in schools in England. Available from: Pupil attendance in schools, Week 16 2024 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.
Department for Education (2024) Pupil absence in schools in England. Available from: Pupil attendance in schools, Week 16 2024 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk). [Accessed 7th May 2024].
Education Select Committee (2023) Persistent absence and support for disadvantaged pupils. Available from: Persistent absence and support for disadvantaged pupils – Education Committee (parliament.uk). [Accessed 7th May 2024].
Fricker, E. (2023) Can’t not won’t: a story about a child who couldn’t go to school. JKP.
Glazzard, J. and Rose, A., 2020. The impact of teacher well-being and mental health on pupil progress in primary schools. Journal of Public Mental Health, 19(4), pp.349-357.
Heyne, D., Gentle-Genitty, C. S., Melvin, G. A., Keppens, G., O’Toole, C., & McKay-Brown, L. (2024). Embracing change: From recalibration to radical overhaul for the field of school attendance. Frontiers in Education 8, Article 1251223. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1251223
Kearney, C.A.; Gonzálvez, C.; Graczyk, P.A.; Fornander, M.J. (2019) Reconciling Contemporary Approaches to School Attendance and School Absenteeism: Toward Promotion and Nimble Response, Global Policy Review and Implementation, and Future Adaptability (Part 1). Front. Psychol., 10, 2222.
Kearney, C. A., and Graczyk, P. A. (2022). Multi-tiered systems of support for school attendance and its problems: an unlearning perspective for areas of high chronic absenteeism. Front. Educ. 7:1020150. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.1020150
Keville, S., Meek, C. & Ludlow, A. K. (2021) Mothers’ perspectives of cooccurring fatigue in children with autism spectrum disorders, Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health & Behavior, 9:4, 209-226, DOI: 10.1080/21641846.2021.200816
Lucas, M. and Julius, J. (2024) The ongoing impact of the cost-of-living crisis on schools. Slough: NFER
McPherson, C., Bayrakdar, S., Gewirtz, S., Laczik, A.; Maguire, M., Newton, O., O’Brien, S., Weavers, A., Winch, C. & Wolf, A. (2023) A. Schools for All? Young People’s Experiences of Alienation in the English Secondary System. Young Lives, Young Futures. 2023. 2023. Available online: https://www.ylyf.co.uk/_files/ugd/44751f_6a7f59a638714b19b2838fbf44973e1d.pdf [accessed on 7 May 2024]
Melvin, G. A., Heyne, D., Gray, K. M., Hastings, R. P., Totsika, V., Tonge, B. J., & Freeman, M. M. (2019). The Kids and Teens at School (KiTeS) Framework: An inclusive bioecological systems approach to understanding school absenteeism and school attendance problems. Frontiers in Education, 4:61. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feduc.2019.00061
NHS Digital (2022) Mental health of children and young people in England, 2022 – wave 3 follow up of the 2017 survey, data tables. NHS England https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in-england/2022-follow-up-to-the-2017-survey/data-sets
Paulauskaite, L., Timmerman, A., Kouroupa, A., Allard, A., Gray, K. M., Hastings, R. P., et al. (2022). Elective home education of children with neurodevelopmental conditions before and after the COVID-19 pandemic started. Front. Psychol. 13:995217. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.995217
Shafan-Azhar, Z. & Bottomley, B (2024). Not in School: the mental health barriers to school attendance. Centre for Mental Health.
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