The recent Schools White Paper included plans for a 94% pupil attendance target, but how can schools reduce absences to meet this ambitious goal, and what is driving high absence rates?
Just last week, the Headteacher Update Podcast tackled the subject of school attendance and best practices for working towards the 94% pupil attendance target.
Two experienced primary school leaders shared the initiatives that have helped boost attendance at their own schools, while also discussing the pitfalls for settings to avoid. The podcast also examined case studies of specific attendance interventions, and the lessons learned from things that haven’t worked.
What are the barriers to school attendance?
School attendance has remained a challenge in England since the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is estimated that nearly 1 in 5 children are now missing at least 10% of their school time (persistent absence).
The issue is particularly significant for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, as these pupils are 2.5 times more likely to miss 10% or more of their schooling than their more privileged peers.
The proposed 94% pupil attendance target set out in the white paper is designed to address the widespread and complex issue.
The Headteacher Update podcast explored what it described as “specific barriers to attendance,” namely:
- Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) – these can make it difficult for pupils to remain engaged in school, or to feel comfortable within the school environment, particularly if their specific needs are not being met or school doesn’t feel very inclusive for them. This is often more likely to be the experience of children with an undiagnosed neurodiversity, such as ADHD or autism, who therefore lack formal support and a written plan tailored to their needs.
- Mental health challenges – depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions can make it difficult for young people to consistently attend school and achieve their potential. In some circumstances mental health problems may be prompted or exacerbated by school-related issues such as bullying or academic pressure.
- Poverty – concerns around the affordability of uniforms, transportation to and from school, school lunches and, for girls, sanitary products, can prevent some children from regularly attending school.
What are the guidelines for school attendance?
Official government guidance on school attendance and absence states that parents “must make sure your child gets a full-time education that meets their needs.”
Children must be in education between the school term after their 5th birthday and the last Friday in June in the school year during which they turn 16. Parents can be prosecuted if they do not give their children an education, but any legal action would usually be preceded by warnings and offers of help from the local authority.
Children are only permitted to miss school if they are too ill to go in or the school has given advanced permission.
The guidance states that there may be other “exceptional circumstances” where parents or caregivers can request permission to take their child out of school. The school will consider each application, but a holiday is generally not considered an exceptional circumstance, and parents may be fined or face legal action if they take their child on holiday during term time.
There is extra support available, however, for children who cannot attend school for long periods of time due to a health problem.
A national target to boost pupil attendance
The UK government’s Schools White Paper, published in February this year, set a national target to boost overall school attendance to in excess of 94% by the 2028-29 academic year.
This national goal represents an increase of 1.3 percentage points above the 2023-24 academic year baseline levels (92.8%), and equates to recovering around 20 million school days per year across the country.
In addition, all mainstream state schools in England will receive their own tailored, AI-informed target which reflects local challenges, student needs and deprivation levels. This is known as each school’s Attendance Baseline Improvement Expectation (ABIE).
The government said the targets would help direct support through Attendance and Behaviour Hubs, rather than becoming the basis for punitive Ofsted measures.
School staff disagree with hardline pupil attendance targets
However, a recent report suggested that many teachers disagree with hardline attendance policies, viewing enforcement strategies as “relentless” and believing that occasional holidays and absences are less of a concern than sustained pupil disengagement, which they identify as the core issue facing the education system.
The three-year research study, entitled A Crisis of Disengagement, was conducted by youth charity Impetus and the policy and polling research firm Public First, and included in-depth conversations with teacher focus groups.
It found that frontline school staff do not believe the school system in England and Wales is set up to effectively deal with the ongoing attendance crisis. In addition, teachers from schools in areas of high deprivation expressed scepticism about the efficiency of holiday fines.
It comes as the Children’s Commissioner, Rachel de Souza, warned that the number of NEETS (young people not in education, employment or training) is almost twice as large as official figures indicate.
Her figures were drawn from a new analysis of 262 of England’s 290 college groups, which indicated that an estimated 42,000 16- and 17-year-olds currently enrolled in colleges in England are attending less than half of the time.
These “hidden NEETS” would not be included in Department for Education attendance figures and de Souza says they are experiencing “all the negative impacts of not being in employment, education or training, but with none of the targeted interventions.”
A Crisis of Disengagement included input from 62 secondary school staff from schools in England where more than a quarter of pupils were eligible for free school meals.
They said the task of chasing pupils’ attendance had become “relentless” and that sustained disengagement was a much more concerning issue than the occasional holiday or minor absence. Some staff expressed the view that fines for unauthorised absences – usually term-time holidays – damage trust and undermine the important relational work to support pupils and families to re-engage with school.
What sparked the school absence crisis?
Many researchers believe that the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting national lockdowns – which saw schools across the country close to all but the children of key workers – led to a significant shift in attitudes towards attendance, suggesting that some parents now view full-time school attendance as “optional”.
In the academic year 2018-19, prior to the pandemic, the absence rate for pupils in England was 4.7%. Fastforward to 2025-26, and this had shot up to 6.93%.
This correlates to a sharp rise in parents being issued penalty notices for unauthorised absences, with almost half a million issued in 2024-25 (492,825), compared to 333,388 in 2018-19.
The number of penalty notices issued to parents has continued to climb since the post-lockdown recovery period, with the percentage of these pertaining to term-time holidays also increasing:
- 2018-19 (pre-pandemic): 333,388 penalty notices issued, with 86% for term-time holidays
- 2022-23: 398,800 penalty notices issued, with 89% for term-time holidays
- 2023-24: circa 487,000 penalty notices issued, with 91% for term-time holidays
- 2024-25: 492,825 penalty notices issued, with 93% for term-time holidays
Despite the introduction of the National Framework for Penalty Notices for school absence in August 2024 – which raised standard fines for unauthorised school absences – the number of unauthorised term-time family holidays has continued to increase. This could be due in part to post-Covid scepticism on the importance of attending school every day, but is also likely driven by the rising cost of living tempting more parents to book cheaper term-time breaks.
Poor pupil attendance ‘driven by failures beyond the school gates’
The Impetus study talks of a “broad consensus across school staff that poor attendance is driven by failures beyond the school gates.”
Indeed, teachers and school leaders interviewed as part of the study said schools had become “the one-stop shop for everything,” and mentioned the following issues as contributing to poor attendance:
- Gaps in mental health support for struggling students
- Unmet special educational needs
- A lack of capacity in wider support services, such as social workers
Researchers also heard that, often, the most effective interventions for tackling absences were also the hardest and most time-consuming to put into practice. These included building relationships with pupils and families, mentoring and home visits. And it is exactly these kinds of interventions that the issuing of penalty notices can harm.
The CEO of Impetus, Susannah Hardyman, said the study had demonstrated that pupils, families and teachers are alike in being “unconvinced that every day in school matters,” while also revealing “a wider crisis of disengagement driven by pressures often outside the control of school staff.”
So, how do schools achieve pupil attendance targets?
In her foreword to the report, Helen Hayes MP, Chair of the Education Committee, said:
“Having a highly trained and skilled teacher in every classroom is one of the best ways we can improve outcomes for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet more teachers than ever are leaving the profession, and the strain of tackling attendance without the right support is part of the reason why.
“As this report shows, there are no silver bullets, but I agree with its central premise – we need to think differently about attendance and act differently to solve it – putting relationships, not compliance, at the centre of our response.
“That means backing teachers and school leaders with the time, training and support to build the trust that gets children through the door and creating a system where students and families see the tangible difference going to school makes to their lives, the lives of our communities and to society.”
The report identifies the following recommendations:
- The government should make better use of attendance data to identify deterioration earlier and recognise improvement.
- The school system should put building belonging and engagement at the heart of attendance strategy.
- Government, employers and the education system should support pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to see attendance as a tangible investment in their future.
Unmet needs of neurodivergent children driving school attendance crisis
Figures suggest that neurodivergent children – particularly autistic pupils and those with Special Educational Needs (SEN) – experience significantly higher rates of persistent and severe school absence compared to their neurotypical peers.
- Persistent Absence: refers to a pupil missing 10% or more of their possible school sessions (equivalent to missing roughly 1 day every 2 weeks).
- Severe Absence: refers to a pupil missing 50% or more of their possible school sessions.
Around 28-31% of autistic children are classified as persistently absent from school, while data from the Department for Education reveals that over 13,000 autistic pupils miss 50% or more of their schooling in an academic year. This means they are over five times more likely to be severely absent from school than pupils with no special educational needs.
There are growing concerns that the unmet needs of neurodivergent children and young people could be driving the school attendance crisis; research from Connolly and Mulally (2022) suggests that more than 90% of children with severe school attendance difficulties or “school distress” are neurodivergent, with over 83% of these identified as autistic.
Pupils with additional learning needs (ALN) or Special Educational Needs (SEN) are 50% more likely to struggle to maintain regular school attendance.
Some of the reasons for low attendance rates among neurodivergent children may include:
- Emotional distress caused by sensory overload at school (noise, harsh lighting)
- Chronic exhaustion from ‘masking’ while in school
- Co-occurring anxiety disorders – more than 90% of neurodivergent children facing attendance challenges exhibit clinically significant anxiety symptoms
Training for autism, learning disability and neurodiversity
First Response Training (FRT) is a leading, national training provider. They deliver a wide and diverse range of training to schools, early years and childcare as well as health and social care and all other industry sectors.
Their training portfolio spans health and safety, first aid, fire safety, manual handling, safeguarding, mental health and neurodiversity training.
FRT was one of the first training providers in the country to be approved to offer essential training in line with the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism.
They are quality assured to deliver Oliver’s Training through the Quality Assured Care Learning Service (QACLS) from the Department of Health and Social Care and Skills for Care.
The national training provider aims to empower and educate staff to transform their practice by embracing the lived experiences of autistic individuals and those with learning disabilities. Through the collaborative strength of their trios—facilitating trainers and experts with lived experience — FRT aims to inspire lasting change in how individuals are understood, supported, and valued.
Neurodiversity and Inclusive Practice in Education
FRT have recently co-developed a focused training session on Neurodiversity and Inclusive Practice in Education, which will be co-delivered with Experts with Lived Experience and which they have developed and tested extensively in partnership with The Tapscott Learning Trust, an award-winning trust based in London.
The Neurodiversity and Inclusive Practice in Education programme is a co-produced school improvement programme designed to help schools strengthen inclusive practice and improve outcomes for neurodivergent and SEND pupils, whether formally diagnosed or not. After all, boosting support and inclusion for all pupils can help to boost engagement in school, and therefore boost school attendance.
Developed by education leaders and Experts with Lived Experience of autism, ADHD and PDA, the programme supports schools to improve attendance, engagement, wellbeing, belonging and attainment through adaptive teaching, reasonable adjustments and whole-school culture change.
Inspired by the nationally recognised Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism, which has trained millions of healthcare professionals across England, the programme combines lived experience, practical strategies, implementation support and impact evaluation to create meaningful and lasting change within education settings.
It also supports schools to develop their Inclusion Strategies and strengthen collaboration with local education, health and care services, helping to create environments where every child feels understood, valued and able to thrive.
Learning outcomes include:
- Explain neurodiversity and common co-occurring profiles
- Recognise early indicators of dysregulation and unmet need
- Understand why autism and other neurodiverse conditions are described as
- Invisible
- Reflect on your own values, beliefs and practice
- Recognise potential differences, strengths and challenges for neurodiverse pupils
- Identify reasonable adjustments and ways to adapt your practice
- Record the impact
Moving beyond awareness to ‘meaningful change in practice’
Perry Leeks, Project Director at FRT, says:
“We were so excited and privileged to collaborate with members of the neurodiverse community to develop a special programme for the education sector that specifically addresses a very real need, meets key criteria outlined in the Schools whitepaper, and helps teachers reflect on and enhance their practice and the support they offer.”
Daniel Mansfield, Training Hub Director at The Tapscott Learning Trust, added:
“One of the most powerful aspects of this programme is that it moves beyond awareness and focuses on meaningful change in practice.
“Throughout the pilot phase, we saw staff develop a deeper understanding of neurodiversity, reflect honestly on the barriers pupils face and identify practical adaptations that could be implemented immediately.
“The ‘One Child in Mind’ approach helps bring the learning to life, ensuring discussions remain rooted in the experiences of real children rather than abstract theory.
“What stood out most was the impact of learning directly from Experts with Lived Experience, which consistently challenged assumptions, increased empathy and inspired action. Schools left not only with greater confidence and understanding, but with tangible plans to improve inclusion, strengthen relationships and create learning environments where all children can thrive.”
Download our flyer to find out more about Neurodiversity and Inclusive Practice in Education.
For further information on other types of neurodiversity training, visit FRT’s webpage or download the brochure.
You can contact FRT via freephone 0800 310 2300, send an e-mail to info@firstresponsetraining.com or submit an online enquiry.