Pupil absence and the pandemic

This report investigates lost education time during the COVID-19 pandemic in England. We look at the general factors affecting rates of absence during different stages of the pandemic and the consequences of specific policy guidance. Our evidence shows that pupil absence was strongly linked to socioeconomic factors, with pupils in schools in more economically disadvantaged areas missing out the most. We look at the influence of the guidance given by Local Authorities during a phased reopening of schools at the end of the first wave of the pandemic in June 2020. We find that pupils in Local Authorities that did not advise schools to comply with central government guidance on re-opening lost out through lower school attendance. We also look at the influence of the local Tier system that was implemented in England in the Autumn of 2020 to enforce social and business restrictions of differing degrees of severity. Although schools could all open whatever the Tier status of their area, attendance was sometimes restricted to priority children in the higher Tiers. We find the pupil absence was indeed higher under more restrictive Tiers, particularly the most restrictive, even conditional on local metrics of pandemic severity. Families from poorer backgrounds were more sensitive to the restrictions, suggesting another reason for their vulnerability to education loss from the pandemic.