In an earlier post, we looked at what we know about Student Absence and what schools should do as a result. Here, we will look at patterns in overall attendance in 2023/24 compared to 2018/19 using an Attendance Percentile measure which we have created using data from schools using Insight.
How have patterns of absence changed over time?
In Insight, we currently gather data for 4,000 Primary Schools. Here, we will look at what we know about the changes in overall absence patterns between 2018/19 (the last year pre-Covid 19) and 2023/24, using data gathered by schools using our system. To do this, we have separated attendance into Attendance Percentiles. The ‘90%’ Attendance Percentile, for example, includes all those who have above 89% up to and including 90% attendance. Each data point is created in a similar way.
We then chart the percentage of students who fall within each Attendance Percentile in 2018/19 and 2023/24 to provide an overview of the general patterns of attendance at student level.
In our data, it is clear that most students are in high Attendance Percentiles, and very few are in the percentiles below 80%.
Looking more closely at Attendance Percentiles from 80% through to 100%, we can see a clear change between 2018/19 and 2023/24.
We can see that the percentage of students in Attendance Percentiles 96% and above in 2023/4 is lower than it was in 2018/19, whilst the percentage of students in Attendance Percentiles below 96% was higher in 2023/24 than 2018/19.
Changing from a line graph to a bar chart (see below) to focus on the detail rather than the overall trend, we can see the knock-on effect at lower levels of overall attendance, whereby the percentage of students with 94% attendance, for example, is higher in 2023/24 than 2018/19.
In the graph below, we have grouped the Attendance Percentiles to visualise a key change between 2018/19 and 2023/24. Fewer student have attendance above 95%, which has resulted in students being more likely to be in lower Attendance Percentiles.
As we can see from the graph below, overall absence (and therefore overall attendance) from 2013/14 to 2018/19 had settled down to a similar level (under 5% absence/over 95% attendance). The data for 2018/19 is therefore likely to be representative of the period before the Covid 19 pandemic and its ongoing effects.
Looking at cumulative Attendance Percentiles (below) we can see even more clearly that there has been an overall change in general patterns of attendance, which has affected all students.
In summary, in 2023/24 students were consistently likely to be in lower Attendance Percentiles than students in 2018/19 at every percentile.
We will look more closely at patterns of authorised and unauthorised absence in future posts. It is clear, however, that there has been a small but noticeable change in patterns of absence and attendance in the five years between 2018/19 and 2023/24, and that this has affected attendance at every Attendance Percentile.
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