The marked increase in absence rates in 2021-2022, which has been sustained in 2022-2023, is rightly a cause for concern for schools, parents and policy makers, given the implications for safeguarding and learning.

Absence remains an issue that disproportionately affects pupils from deprived backgrounds and those with special educational needs, harming further these pupils’ educational outcomes. But the recent attendance crisis does not appear to have exacerbated this existing inequality. The widespread impact on pupils with differing needs and backgrounds suggests there is less of a connection to socioeconomic drivers and perhaps more of a root in pupils’ and parents’ perceptions of the value of school.

Some signs point towards the fact that the pandemic has added fuel to growing parental fears and dissatisfaction with the current nature of education. 2021-2022 saw an explosion in persistent and severe absence that was already on the rise before the pandemic, as was the level of unauthorised absence. Many parents were told that schools were not safe spaces and that learning could take place at home. Higher levels of Friday absence may be a sign that these parents are more willing to let their children remain with them when they work from home, but the pandemic appears to be an accelerant, rather than a trigger.

It is clear that mental health is playing a role in rising absences and the impact of the pandemic will continue to be felt long after the last lockdown. Pupil mental health (and its likely influence on behaviour, attendance and attainment) is a growing challenge for many schools. Large-scale pupil surveys (such as those being carried out by the Children’s Commissioner) and new datasets linking health and education should shed more light on how pupils’ experiences influence their mental health, perceptions of school and attendance.

The largely indiscriminate nature of the crisis, which speaks to widespread changes in attitudes towards physical attendance, poses a unique challenge for schools and policymakers. Efforts to tackle the attendance crisis must therefore be guided by our understanding of its root causes. The effectiveness of interventions will depend drastically on the origins of the problem. When resources are scarce (as is likely over the coming years), there is an even greater imperative to fund interventions that work.

This analysis, and previous work conducted by BIT, points towards four areas for further research.

• Getting to the root causes of absence and understanding what works in reducing it. Policymakers must interrogate the huge volume of data available and build the evidence base on the effectiveness of attendance-based interventions, which is currently relatively weak.
• Getting to the root causes should include building our understanding of pupils’ and parents’ attitudes towards school; it is clear that attitudes towards physical attendance have changed, but little detail is known about the reasons pupils and parents have for absence.
• Steps are already being taken to understand how social norms messaging can improve attendance. Evidence suggests that providing parents with information on the number of days their child has missed, and the likely impact on educational outcomes, can incentivise better attendance. BIT is already conducting trials on attendance text messaging to parents. More should be done to determine how to scale these approaches.
• More could also be done with the significant amount of attendance data recorded by schools to identify and preemptively support at-risk pupils. Historical attendance patterns could be used to identify incoming pupils at greatest risk of absence and inform the use of targeted interventions. Live attendance data could be used to quickly identify pupils with changing attendance patterns and disrupt trajectories towards persistent and severe absence.
• Establish if there are similarities in the policies and practices of schools that have managed to reduce absence during and after the pandemic. This could offer valuable insight into approaches that could be implemented in schools across the country.