Attendance of pupils in maintained schools: 6 September to 10 September 2021

This headline presents information on pupils in attendance in schools during the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This is the first publication of the academic year. It will be published at 9:30am every Wednesday from 15 September 2021 onwards.

The 2021/22 academic year began on 1 September 2021. The majority of schools had no pupils in attendance on 1 to 2 September 2021 due to INSET days. Therefore, this headline presents data from 6 September 2021 onwards.

The information published for the 2020/21 academic year related to pupils who were physically present on the school premises for at least one school session each day. This allowed us to measure the number of pupils that had direct contact with staff and other pupils at school during this pandemic. For this current 2021/22 academic year, and following policy decisions on school bubbles and self-isolation we have returned to the definition of pupils in attendance in schools used in our historical statistical publications. This means that the data for this academic year and last one are not strictly comparable. The register codes that define which pupils are counted as in attendance can be found in Table 7 of the accompanying spreadsheet.

Main points

• An average of 94% of all pupils were present in school over the week of 6 September to 10 September 2021. This data is provisional. The total number of pupils and number of pupils in attendance is expected to increase when the data is revised on 22 September 2021.
• For the week of 6 September to 10 September 2021 there was little difference between the percentage of girls and boys present in school. This is different when compared to the pattern seen in our historical publications, where boys have had lower attendance rates.
• Amongst statutory school age pupils over the week of 6 September to 10 September 2021, the percentage of pupils present was highest for pupils in Year 7 (97%).
• The most common reason for sessions missed during the week of 6 September to 10 September 2021 was illness (code “I”). The data in this table is a count of half day school sessions missed and is not a count of pupils.

Quality

A quality report is in development and will be published as soon as possible.

This data is management information extracted from school management information systems once a week. It covers pupils who were in attendance at maintained nursery, primary, middle, secondary and special schools and includes pupils of all ages. It also includes some pupils from Pupil Referral Units.

This data has not undergone the same level of quality assurance as official statistics and the data may be subject to future revisions. The figures for the latest two weeks should be treated as provisional. Earlier figures are final and are not subject to change.

Comparability

All 4 nations are publishing regular data on attendance in school. We do not advise making comparisons between the nations due to differences in data collection methods, presentation and definitions.

Background and context

Schools: coronavirus guidance.

National Statistics status

These statistics are not National Statistics and have been produced quickly in response to developing national and local events.