Concern has been expressed as one in six Nottingham school pupils missed at least 10 percent of their scheduled time at school in 2021/22. New data from the Office for National Statistics shows that 15 percent of pupils in Nottingham have had persistent absences.
Persistent absences in Nottinghamshire were found to be 10.3 percent, which was lower than Nottingham and the national average for England, which was 12.1 percent of pupils. Compared to other cities in the East Midlands, Nottingham remained the highest.
The rate of persistent absences was 13.2 percent in Derby and 11.9 percent in Leicester, whilst Lincolnshire had a rate of 12.3 percent for the county. The data also found that of these persistent absences in Nottingham, 23.1 percent of the pupils missing school are on free school meals.
Additionally, 33.9 percent of the persistent absences in the city were also found to be coming from pupils cared for by the local authority. There are a number of reasons why pupils miss school, with one reason during this time thought to be due to the pandemic.
Nick Lee, Director of Education at Nottingham City Council, said: “We’ve done a lot of work over the past decade to emphasise the importance of good school attendance to parents, carers and pupils. A child should be in school every day unless they are too ill to attend or there are exceptional circumstances – the law is very clear on this.
"We want all children in Nottingham to achieve their full potential and those who have time off school find it difficult to catch up. At secondary age, just 17 school days missed can lead to one GCSE grade lost."
He continued: “However, we are also aware of the impact of the coronavirus>Covid lockdowns and we can see that local absence rates have increased since schools reopened, as they have right across the country. There are a number of more complex reasons for this, including difficulties readjusting post-pandemic and higher prevalence of seasonal illnesses, and we continue to work with schools to address these.
“While we are keeping a close eye on general absence rates in Nottingham, we have seen numbers falling among looked-after children and this is encouraging. We need to see this mirrored now with all pupils.”
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