Monitor your school attendance: user guide (2024)

Overview

The monitor your school attendance tool can help you:

• identify trends
• identify pupils who may need support
• save time building attendance reports
• if you are a school, compare attendance within the local authority and nationally

You can use the data to discuss your school’s, trust’s or local authority’s current strategies to attendance. You can review their effectiveness and whether you need an alternative approach.

Use DfE’s published statistics to compare your attendance with data on local authority, regional and national attendance levels via the pupil attendance and absence in England dashboard.

Data you can access and use

When you access the tool, you will have the option to view, compare or download attendance data, depending on your organisation type.

Schools and single academy trusts can access and use:

• school attendance reports which give you data and insight into your school, pupil groups and individual pupils
• compare your school attendance tables to compare attendance with other schools in your local authority and see your school’s position for attendance nationally

Local authorities and multi-academy trusts can access and use:

• view your school attendance data dashboard
• attendance downloads which is a CSV file of year-to-date pupil level data, up to the latest week (new files are available every Monday)

School attendance reports

You can view your attendance and absence data by:

• whole school
• pupil
• term
• academic year

You can apply filters to attendance reports to view pupil characteristics for:

• sex
• ethnicity
• year group
• persistently absent
• severely absent
• special education needs support (SEN)
• free school meals (FSM)
• education, health and care plan (EHCP)
• looked after child (LAC)
• previously looked after child
• child in need (CIN)
• child protection plan (CPP)

Attendance codes

You can use the attendance code report to filter data by attendance code.For example, you can select the code for ‘unauthorised holiday’ and see when it has been used at pupil level.

A list of DfE attendance codes areavailable in the Working together to improve school attendance: applies until 18 August 2024 (page 55) guidance.

Compare your school attendance tables

Schools can compare pupil attendance and absence data with other schools in the same phase of education. You can compare schools within your local authority and nationally.

Use the compare your school attendance tables to compare:

• overall absence
• overall attendance
• persistent absence (misses 10% or more of sessions)
• severe absence (misses 50% or more of sessions)
• authorised absence
• unauthorised absence

Review our data definitions to understand the terms we use in our school attendance tables.

You can compare attendance for all compulsory school age pupils and those who have:

• special educational needs support (SEN)
• free school meals (FSM)

Special schools cannot currently use the tool. Special schools exist to meet complex and varying needs. It is not appropriate to compare attendance outcomes of special schools with mainstream schools.

Where the data comes from

The data is from a subset of schools in England that are sharing daily attendance data with DfE.It is refreshed every 2 weeks.

The data we use to calculate your position:

• is for the current academic year-to-date
• includes attendance codes for each pupil (as recorded in your MIS)

How we calculate your position

You get a local authority and a national position. This tells you how you are performing compared to other schools in the same phase of education (for example, primary or secondary). It is anonymous so you will not see which schools you have been compared with.

Local authority position

Your local authority comparison is a numbered position out of the schools you have been compared with. If you are ranked as 1, this is the highest.

You are only compared with other schools in the same phase of education, in the same local authority.

The number of schools you are compared to depends on the number of schools in your local authority that are sharing daily attendance data with DfE.

National position

Your national position depends on how your attendance or absence compares with all other schools in the same phase in England, sharing attendance data with DfE.

For each measure, we take the total number of schools and put them in order from top to bottom, based on their attendance for the academic year-to-date.

Schools are divided into 10 equal groups that each represent 10% of all schools.

We provide your national position as a decile.

This means that:

• 10% of schools are in the first decile, in the top 0-10% of schools
• 10% of schools are in second decile, in the top 10-20% of schools
• 10% of schools are third decile, in the top 20-30% of all schools

The tenth decile represents the schools in the lowest 10% of attendance.

Percentages are rounded to the nearest decimal place, but the decile positions are calculated using unrounded data.

Each decile is equal and represents 10% of the schools you are being compared to.

A decile may appear larger than others when there are a high number of schools with the same percentage of attendance.

The table shows:

• which decile your school is in
• the number of schools in your decile
• the highest and lowest attendance or absence percentage in the decile (this updates as attendance changes nationally)

Your decile position, along with the highest and lowest in your decile, gives you an understanding of your performance at a national level. This gives you an idea how far you may be from the next decile.

Take care when interpreting the data. The tool shows your position to others. There may be reasons why a school has a high or low performing position. When using your results to plan, you should consider the differences between yours and other schools.

Comparisons between pupil characteristic groups should be used with caution. Cohort sizes will vary between schools. You should maintain high aspirations for all pupils and put strategies in place to review any gaps in attendance for specific groups.

Data we include

Schools

Schools are grouped by education phase and compared with others in the same phase, for example, primary or secondary. This includes:

• middle deemed primary schools - classed as primary schools
• middle deemed secondary schools - classed as secondary schools
• all through schools - classed as secondary schools

Sessions

A ‘session’ is either a weekday morning or afternoon when a pupil could attend school. A ‘possible session’ is when a pupil attended or was expected to attend. We only include possible sessions when calculating your ranking.

Possible sessions are where an attendance code has been used to show that a session was possible.Attendance codes you can use for possible sessions are listed in data definitions.

Any sessions that are not considered possible sessions are excluded. This means that if you have used an attendance code that is not considered a possible session, (for example code D for a pupil with dual registration who is not due at school), these sessions will not be included. Sessions are also excluded where no code has been used or where there is no data available.

Pupils

Pupils who are not yet compulsory school age are not included in your ranking, even if you are sharing daily attendance data for them.

Severe absence

National comparison tables do not include data on severe absence for primary or secondary schools. This is not currently published at a national level from the daily attendance data schools submit.

Attendance downloads

Academy trusts and local authorities can download attendance data as a .CSV file. The file contains aggregate absence data for each pupil in the local authority, for the academic year-to-date. It is up to date to the latest Friday and updated every Monday.

For each pupil in the local authority, the file contains:

• pupil name
• UPN
• URN
• sex
• ethnicity
• compulsory school age (Y/N)
• special educational needs support (Y/N)
• free school meals (Y/N)
• looked after child (Y/N)
• previously looked after child (Y/N)
• child in need (CIN) (Y/N/Unknown)
• child protection plan (Y/N/ Unknown)
• severely absent (Y/N)
• year group
• full days missed
• possible sessions
• absent sessions
• present sessions
• approved educational activity sessions
• unauthorised absence
• authorised absence

For each school in the local authority:

• learning provider UKPN
• school name
• school phase

If a data field is not collected or shared by the school, it will show as unknown.

Data definitions we use in the report

Data definitions in the reports may change and are for the academic year 2023 to 2024 only.

Attendance %: Number of present sessions divided by number of possible sessions.

Present sessions: Number of sessions with attendance code: /, \, B, J, L, P, V, or W.

Possible sessions: Number of sessions with attendance code: /, \, B, C, E, G, H, I, I01, I02, J, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, or W. For the academic year 2022 to 2023, this includes code: 8, 9, X, X01 and X09. (X codes apply to the academic year 2022 to 2023 only).

Persistent absence: Pupil has an absent rate of 10% or more, for at least 20 possible sessions in the current academic year.

Severely absent: Pupil has an absence rate of 50% or more for at least 20 possible sessions in the current academic year.

Absence %: Number of absent sessions divided by number of possible sessions.

Absent sessions: Number of sessions with attendance code: C, E, G, H, I, I01, I02, M, N, O, R, S, T, U, 7, F, 8, 9, X, X01, X02, X03, X04, X05, X06, X07, X08, X09 (X codes apply to the academic year 2022 to 2023 only).

Unauthorised %: Number of unauthorised sessions divided by number of possible sessions.

Unauthorised sessions: Number of sessions with attendance code G, N, O or U.

Authorised %: Number of authorised sessions divided by number of possible sessions.

Authorised sessions: Number of sessions with attendance code: C, E, H, I, I01, I02, M, R, S, or T.

Day(s) absent in part or in full: Number of unique dates with at least one absent session.

Full days absent: Number of unique dates where both AM and PM sessions are absent sessions (see absent sessions).

Days since last absence: Number of unique dates with at least one possible session between the date of the last session with an attendance code: C, E, G, H, I, I01, I02, M, N, O, R, S, T, U, 7, F, 8, 9, X, X01, X02, X03, X04, X05, X06, X07, X08, X09 and the date of the latest available record. (X codes apply to the academic year 2022 to 2023 only).

Fix common user issues

If you are having any issues with data in your attendance reports, you can:

• check for known issues and fixes
• report an issue on theDfE customer help portal

Your position in the compare your school attendance tables may not be accurate if:

• you are using anyDfE attendance codes incorrectly (these are available in the Working together to improve school attendance: applies until 18 August 2024 (page 55) guidance
• your daily attendance reports show ‘(blank)’ in the fields for some sessions, these sessions are not included
• your reports show pupils with no session data, these pupils have not been included
• you have not used code K to indicate a pupil’s SEN support status