Attendance continues to be a significant challenge for schools across the country. Last year we launched our Understanding Attendance national research project to help schools and trusts identify the drivers behind low attendance in their contexts and what initiatives they can put in place to address this. Crucially this does not just look at what’s happening with attendance but why it’s happening. In January 2024 we launched our Understanding Attendance Report to share our insights from the project so far. The research incorporates findings on the drivers of absence from over 30,000 pupils and is the largest of its kind in the UK to date.

Watch this event recording to learn more about our report findings and hear attendance experts advise on the key findings. Amongst other areas, this included the importance of pupils’ sense of belonging, how drivers of low attendance differ for different groups of pupils, and trends we’re seeing across national data on attendance.