School Absences and Pupil Achievement

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

No 1, CEPEO Briefing Note Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

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.

Keywords: Pupil absence; School closures; Pupil achievement. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I21 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 3 pages
Date: 2020-04, Revised 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeob/cepeobn1.pdf First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

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