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School Absences and Pupil Achievement

Author

Listed:
  • Sam Sims

    (UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, University College London)

Abstract

School absence occurs when a pupil does not attend school when it would usually be open. In England, the average pupil missed 8.4 of the 195 scheduled days in the 2018/19 academic year. However, this masks wide variation in the number of days missed, with 10.9% of pupils absent for more than 10 days (DfE, 2020). Absences happen for two broad reasons. 1. Pupils can fail to turn up to school on a day that the school is open. They may be ill, truanting or natural obstacles such as flooding may prevent them from attending. 2. The school may be experiencing an unscheduled closure due to a teaching strike, extreme weather or a disease epidemic (such as COVID-19). Pupils absent from school tend to miss out on new learning and may also forget previously learned material. This briefing note summarises the empirical evidence on the strength of the relationship between school absence and pupil achievement.

Suggested Citation

  • Sam Sims, 2020. "School Absences and Pupil Achievement," CEPEO Briefing Note Series 1, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, revised Apr 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucl:cepeob:1
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    File URL: https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeob/cepeobn1.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2020
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    Cited by:

    1. Matt Dickson & Lindsey Macmilllan, 2020. "Inequality in access to grammar schools," CEPEO Briefing Note Series 3, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, revised Apr 2020.
    2. Laura Outhwaite & Anthea Gulliford, 2020. "Academic and social and emotional interventions in response to COVID-19 school closures," CEPEO Briefing Note Series 5, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, revised Jun 2020.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pupil absence; School closures; Pupil achievement.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality

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