It will likely come as no surprise to anyone that in order to do well at school, a pupil needs to be in class regularly - making the most of their education for the best possible outcomes.
This week, the Government released the overall absence and attendance figures for the full 2023/24 school year. Despite showing a small improvement on the year before, the absence rate - or the percentage of half-days missed for all pupils - still lingered stubbornly above pre-pandemic figures. It sat at 7.1% in the last school year, compared to 4.7% in the 2018/19 one. One in 5 pupils were also classified as ‘persistently absent’ from class, nearly double the pre-pandemic figure.
Another recent Department for Education report also showed just how important regular attendance is to a young person’s outcomes at school. It found that pupils who attended school nearly every day in Year 11 were almost twice as likely to achieve a Grade 5 in their English and Maths GCSEs, compared to pupils who only attended 90 to 95% of the time. This meant that missing just 10 days reduced the likelihood of getting a strong pass in these required subjects by around 50%.
Included with the Government’s attendance figures was the absence data for each state-funded secondary school in England. We’ve crunched the numbers to calculate which secondary schools had the lowest overall absence rates for any reason. With attendance and attainment seemingly so interlinked, it’s no surprise then that many of these schools were also among the country’s highest performing state secondary schools overall in the last academic year.
Here were the 15 schools that boasted the highest attendance rates - and the lowest absences:
1. Ashcroft Technology Academy
At the top of the list is Ashcroft, a secondary school and sixth form in London’s Wandsworth borough. Like many of the others on the list, it also boasted exceptional performance figures - with its Progress 8 score for the last year in the ‘well above average’ band, and a former overall rating of ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. In the 2023/24 school year, it had an absence rate of just 2.63%. | Google
2. Eden Boys' School, Birmingham
Eden is an Islamic boys’ secondary school and sixth form in Birmingham, with the fourth highest overall Progress 8 score (an official measure of school performance based on GCSE results) of any English secondary school in the last school year. In the 2023/24 school year, it had an absence rate of 2.81%. | Google
3. Tauheedul Islam Boys' High School
Another high-performing Islamic boys’ secondary school and sixth form managed by Star Academies, this one is in Blackburn, Lancashire. In the 2023/24 school year, it had an absence rate of 2.84%. | Google
4. Beths Grammar School
Beths is a selective boys’ secondary school and sixth form in the London borough of Bexley. In the 2023/24 school year, it had an absence rate of 2.94%. | D. Metcalfe/Google