Record 170,000 children in England missed at least half of classes in 2024

In the last academic year (2018-19) before the Covid pandemic struck, just over 60,000 children were recorded as severely absent. Photograph: Chris Bull/Alamy

More than 170,000 children in England missed at least half their school lessons last year, which is a record high, government figures suggest.

This amounts to 2.3% of pupils who were “severely absent”, which means they missed at least 50% of possible classes, in 2023-24 compared with 2.0% in 2022-23.