Regular school attendance is vital, when it comes to empowering primary schools to do what they do best.
But whether it be due to unauthorised term-time holidays, children going missing from education, or unavoidable issues like illnesses, our nationwide attendance rates could be better. The Government’s latest absence and attendance figures, covering the full 2023/24 school year, show that the overall absence rate - the percentage of half-days missed for all pupils - sits at a lofty 7.1%, well above pre-pandemic figures. One in five pupils were also ‘persistently absent’, meaning they missed at least 10% of these half-day sessions.
A recent Department for Education report has highlighted just how disruptive these absences can be to a young person’s education, even during their early schooling. It found that pupils who attended class nearly every day in Year 6 were 1.3 times more likely to meet the Government’s expected standards in reading, writing and maths compared to pupils who only attended 90-95% of the time. This means missing just 10 days of school cuts their chances by around 25%.
With more than 140 primary schools in the Liverpool City Council area alone, we’ve taken a look at how they fared when it came to pupils missing class for any reason over the last school year. We’ve used this data to create a league table celebrating the local schools that kept their absence rates at 4% or lower - a fantastic achievement for any school community.
Here are the 13 that made the cut:
13. St Austin's Catholic Primary School
Rounding out the list as the last Liverpool city school with an absence rate of 4% or lower is St Austin’s, a local authority-maintained Catholic primary in the Grassendale area. It cares for about 415 pupils. In the 2023/24 school year, it too had an overall absence rate of 4%. | Google