School staff absences continue to rise due to Covid

The latest school attendance statistics for 20 January show 99.9% of schools are open, with 87.4% of pupils attending, down from 88.6% on 6 January.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) related pupil absence in all state-funded schools was 5.1% on 20 Jan, up from 3.9% on 6 Jan.

Among pupils absent for COVID-19 reasons, 3.9 per cent of pupils were off with a confirmed case of COVID-19, and 0.6% of pupils were absent with a suspected case of COVID-19.

24% of all state-funded schools had more than 15% of their teachers and school leaders absent on 20 January, compared with 18% at the start of term on 13 January, and 8% at the start of the academic year on 16 September. The increase has largely been driven by the increase in workforce absence in state-funded primary schools.

While absences due to Covid are inevitable, the Department for Education has launched a new consultation on how to tackle the postcode lottery of avoidable absence.

It proposes that all schools have robust policies detailing how they will support pupils to attend as regularly as possible and sets out how legal intervention including penalty notices should be used in promoting good attendance by local authorities.