Guidance

Monitor your school attendance: user guide

Updated 19 March 2025

Applies to England

Overview

The monitor your school attendance tool can help you:

• identify trends
• identify pupils who may need support
• save time building attendance reports
• if you are a school, compare attendance within the local authority and nationally

You can use the data to discuss your school’s, trust’s or local authority’s current strategies to attendance. You can review their effectiveness and whether you need an alternative approach, in line with the Working together to improve school attendance guidance.

Use Department for Education (DfE)’s published statistics to compare your attendance with data on local authority, regional and national attendance levels via the pupil attendance and absence in England dashboard.

Where the data comes from

Monitor your school attendance contains data from schools sharing daily attendance data with DfE.

All data comes from school management information systems (MIS) twice daily, in the morning and afternoon. Data in the tool will change when systems get updated.

How we calculate your results

We include all possible attendance sessions in the academic year-to-date. This is from each pupil’s admission date, up to the latest available possible attendance session.

If a pupil has left your school, we include their attendance rates in your results up to and including their leaving date.

Data in the tool may be different from data in your MIS, official statistics and other attendance data tools. Other reports may cover a term, an entire academic year or the academic year-to-date. This may cause particularly large differences in the number of persistently absent pupils.

Use our data definitions to understand the terms we use and how we calculate your results in school attendance reports.

Comparing data with DfE’s published statistics

Pupil attendance in schools presents figures from the daily attendance data at a national, regional and local authority level.

Data is released on Explore Education Statistics every 2 weeks. To allow for any retrospective changes to the data from schools, statistics are published with a 2-week lag.

Use DfE’s statistics methodology to understand why data may be different to your school attendance reports.

Data you can access and use

When you access the tool, you will have the option to view, compare or download attendance data, depending on your organisation type.

Schools and single academy trusts can access and use:

• school attendance reports which give you data and insight into your school, pupil groups and individual pupils
• compare your school attendance tables to compare attendance with other schools in your local authority and see your school’s position for attendance nationally

Local authorities and multi-academy trusts can access and use:

• view your school attendance data dashboard
• attendance downloads which is a CSV file of year-to-date pupil-level data, up to the latest week (new files are available every Monday)

School attendance reports

You can view your attendance and absence data by:

• whole school
• pupil
• term
• academic year

You can apply filters to attendance reports to view pupil characteristics for:

• compulsory school age
• sex
• ethnicity
• year group
• persistently absent
• severely absent
• special education needs (SEN) support
• free school meals (FSM)
• education, health and care plan (EHCP)
• looked after child (LAC)
• previously looked after child (PLAC)
• child in need (CIN)
• child protection plan (CPP)
• leavers 
• leaving date

Attendance and absence codes

You can use the attendance code report to filter data by attendance and absence code. For example, you can select the code for ‘unauthorised holiday’ and see when it has been used at pupil level.

A list of the required DfE attendance and absence codes are available in chapter 8 of the Working together to improve school attendance guidance.

Absence bandings for schools 

Schools, academy trusts and local authorities can use the absence bandings report to review absence data. Use the absence bandings user guide to find out how to use it to target your resources to have the greatest impact.

The 10 days of continuous unauthorised absence report

Schools can use this report to identify pupils with 10 school days (calculated as 20 sessions) or more of continuous unauthorised absence.

Data is for the current academic year-to-date and is updated daily.

The report shows pupils with unauthorised absence for a period of 10 school days or more, who are:

• currently absent
• have returned from a period of absence

Pupils can appear in the results more than once. You see each period of unauthorised absence listed separately.

For each pupil, you get:

• pupil name
• unique pupil number (UPN)
• date of first absence
• last absence date (if pupil has returned)
• total number of absent sessions

How to use this data for your attendance returns

You can use this data to help you to complete attendance returns to your local authority, although further information may still be required. Page 21 of the Working together to improve attendance guidance has more information.

To identify compulsory school age pupils in the data for your attendance return, apply the filter on the right-hand side of the report.

Ten days of unauthorised absence split by holidays or inset days are included in the report. They should be included in your attendance return.

Data we do not include in the report

Pupils who have failed to attend regularly, but have not yet reached 10 school days of unauthorised absence are not included in the report. However, they must be included in attendance returns.

Review your local authority’s requirements for full details. You can use the school attendance reports to identify pupils with the relevant absence rates.

How we calculate unauthorised absence

We only include pupils with 20 continuous unauthorised absence sessions or more in any given academic year. We calculate them using session data with absence code G, N, O or U.

The first unauthorised session we include in the data can be an afternoon session, if it starts a period of 20 continuous sessions of unauthorised absence.

We only include possible attendance sessions in the report. Any sessions that are not considered possible attendance sessions are excluded.

Use our data definitions to understand the terms we use in our school attendance reports.

Year-to-date comparison reports

You can use the report to compare attendance and absence in the current academic year-to-date with the previous year. Data is shown by academic week to help you to identify attendance and absence patterns.

Schools, academy trusts and local authorities can get data for:

• the whole school, trust or local authority
• an individual pupil

Select a term from the drop down to get data visualisations for:

• attendance
• absence
• unauthorised absence

Understanding academic weeks

Academic week numbers are for the same period of time in each academic year.

To calculate academic weeks, we have adapted the ISO 8601 week-numbering year to the academic year.

For the majority of schools in England, each academic year will run from 1 September to 31 August. However, a small number of schools start the academic year in August.

To ensure data is available in the report for all schools, we start the year in August.

The date that academic week 1 starts depends on the day of the week that 1 August falls on.

Academic year	Day that 1 August is on	Academic week 1 starts
2023 to 2024	Tuesday	Tuesday 1 August 2023
2024 to 2025	Thursday	Thursday 1 August 2024
2025 to 2026	Friday	Monday 4 August 2025
2026 to 2027	Saturday	Monday 3 August 2026

If 1 August is on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, then this is week 1.

If 1 August is on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, more than half of that week is in July so it is the final week of the previous academic year. This means that week 1 starts on the following Monday.

Academic weeks start and end dates

You will see data in the report from the start of your academic year.

For the academic year 2024 to 2025, you can check which academic week applies to your school based on the date your academic year starts.

For academic year starts between	Data will show in the report from
Thursday 1 August to Sunday 4 August	Academic week 1
Monday 5 August to Sunday 11 August	Academic week 2
Monday 12 August to Sunday 18 August	Academic week 3
Monday 19 August to Sunday 25 August	Academic week 4
Monday 26 August to Sunday 1 September	Academic week 5
Monday 2 September to Sunday 8 September	Academic week 6
Monday 9 September to Sunday 15 September	Academic week 7

If your school starts the academic year in the first week of September, you will see year-to-date data in the report from week 6.

If your school starts the academic year in the last week of August, you will see year-to-date data in the report from week 5.

How we calculate academic weeks

To calculate academic weeks we use the ISO 8601 standard, which is an Open Standard selected for use by the government.

We have used the ISO week-numbering year and adapted it to the academic year. This standard helps to make it easier to compare different dates.

ISO week-numbering year

An ISO year has 52 or 53 full weeks. This is 364 or 371 days instead of the usual 365 or 366 days.

53-week years occur when 1 January starts on a Thursday (and on leap years that start on Wednesday 1 January). Weeks start on Monday and end on Sunday.

The definition for week 1 is:

• the week containing 4 January
• the week containing the first Thursday in January
• the first week of the year containing at least 4 days within January

For example, 1 January falls in week 1 if it is on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

If 1 January is a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, then more than half of that week is in December rather than January. It is considered to be the final week of the previous year, in week 52 or 53.

Where the data comes from

The data is from your school’s MIS and is refreshed every week.

The data:

• is for the current academic year-to-date and previous academic year
• includes attendance and absence codes for each pupil (as recorded in the schools MIS)

How we calculate attendance and absence data

We only include possible attendance sessions in the report. Any sessions that are not considered possible attendance sessions are excluded.

Session data and the attendance and absence codes we use in the report are explained in data definitions.

Check your leaver data report

Important information for schools on recording leaver data correctly

Some schools have previously recorded leaving dates incorrectly in their MIS. Making errors in recording pupil admission, deletion and attendance data has a significant impact on data in your school attendance reports.

Use DfE’s Working together to improve school attendance guidance for details about keeping the admissions and attendance register up to date.

Review your leaver data

Use the check your leaver data report to get a list of pupils with session data recorded after their leaving date in your MIS. We exclude these sessions from data calculations in the tool, so you should check this data is accurate.

Data in the report is refreshed daily based on changes in your MIS. Results are for the current academic year-to-date and previous academic year.

To see all pupils with a leaving date, go to the ‘school’ report in the view your school attendance data dashboard and apply the ‘leavers’ filter.

Updating leaver data

Pupils are removed from results in the check your leaver data report when they no longer have sessions recorded after their leaving date. If you need to update leaver data in your MIS, you should do this with caution. Data must be updated and recorded in line with statutory guidance.

When to update a leaving date 

A leaving date should only be recorded in your MIS when a pupil has left the school and meets the grounds for deletion on page 64 of the Working together to improve school attendance guidance.

Leaving dates should not be used for any other reason. For example, when pupils move from one year group to another within the same school. 

You can remove a pupil’s leaving date if it has been wrongly used.

Changing incorrect session data

Session data should only be updated if the reason for absence was not known at the time it was recorded.

If a leaver has incorrect sessions recorded after their leaving date, make sure that when updating your MIS you follow the statutory guidance on maintaining the contents of the attendance register. You can find this in chapter 8 of the Working together to improve school attendance guidance.

Compare your school attendance tables

Schools can compare pupil attendance and absence data with other schools in the same phase of education. You can compare schools within your local authority and nationally.

Use the compare your school attendance tables to compare:

• overall absence
• overall attendance
• persistent absence (misses 10% or more of sessions)
• severe absence (misses 50% or more of sessions)
• authorised absence
• unauthorised absence

Use data definitions to understand the terms we use in our school attendance tables.

You can compare attendance for all compulsory school age pupils and those who have:

• SEN support
• FSM

Special schools cannot currently use the tool. Special schools exist to meet complex and varying needs. It is not appropriate to compare attendance outcomes of special schools with mainstream schools.

Where the data comes from

The data is from a subset of schools in England that are sharing daily attendance data with DfE. It is refreshed every 2 weeks.

The data we use to calculate your position:

• is for the current academic year-to-date
• includes attendance and absence codes for each pupil (as recorded in your MIS)

How we calculate your position

You get a local authority and a national position. This tells you how you are performing compared with other schools in the same phase of education (for example, primary or secondary). It is anonymous so you will not see which schools you have been compared with.

Local authority position

Your local authority comparison is a numbered position out of the schools you have been compared with. If you are ranked as 1, this is the highest.

You are only compared with other schools in the same phase of education, in the same local authority.

The number of schools you are compared with depends on the number of schools in your local authority that are sharing daily attendance data with DfE.

National position

Your national position depends on how your attendance or absence compares with all other schools in the same phase in England, sharing attendance data with DfE.

For each measure, we take the total number of schools and put them in order from top to bottom, based on their attendance for the academic year-to-date.

Schools are divided into 10 equal groups that each represent 10% of all schools.

We provide your national position as a decile.

This means that:

• 10% of schools are in the first decile, in the top 0 to 10% of schools
• 10% of schools are in second decile, in the top 10 to 20% of schools
• 10% of schools are third decile, in the top 20 to 30% of all schools

The tenth decile represents the schools with the lowest 10% of attendance.

Percentages are rounded to the nearest decimal place, but the decile positions are calculated using unrounded data.

Each decile is equal and represents 10% of the schools you are being compared with. 

A decile may appear larger than others when there are a high number of schools with the same percentage of attendance.

The table shows:

• which decile your school is in
• the number of schools in your decile
• the highest and lowest attendance or absence percentage in the decile (this updates as attendance changes nationally)

Your decile position, along with the highest and lowest in your decile, gives you an understanding of your performance at a national level. This gives you an idea how far you may be from the next decile.

Take care when interpreting the data. The tool shows your position to others. There may be reasons why a school has a high or low performing position. When using your results to plan, you should consider the differences between your school and other schools.

Comparisons between pupil characteristic groups should be used with caution. Cohort sizes will vary between schools. You should maintain high aspirations for all pupils and put strategies in place to review any gaps in attendance for specific groups in line with schools’ responsibilities in chapter 2 of the Working together to improve school attendance guidance.

Example showing how we calculate your position

Out of 10,000 schools, you are in the first decile if you are in the top performing 1,000 schools. 

You will be in the second decile if your school is between position 1,001 and 2,000.

You will be in the tenth decile (worst performing) if you are between position 9,001 and 10,000.

Example showing how the highest and lowest in decile works

You are told you are in the second decile (10 to 20%) of schools. Your attendance rate is 94.55%. 

You are also told that your decile limits range from 90.55% to 95.55%. This means that you will move to the first decile (top 10% of schools) if you can improve your attendance from 94.55% to greater than 95.55%, if the limits remain unchanged.

Data we include

Schools

Schools are grouped by education phase and compared with others in the same phase, for example, primary or secondary. This includes:

• middle-deemed primary schools – classed as primary schools
• middle-deemed secondary schools – classed as secondary schools
• all-through schools – classed as secondary schools

Sessions

We only include possible attendance sessions when calculating your ranking.

Any sessions that are not considered possible attendance sessions are excluded. This means that if you have used an attendance or absence code that is not considered a possible attendance, for example code D for a pupil with dual registration who is not due at school, these sessions will not be included.

Session data and the attendance and absence codes we use to calculate your ranking are explained in data definitions.

Pupils

Pupils who are not yet compulsory school age are not included in your ranking, even if you are sharing daily attendance data for them. 

Severe absence

National comparison tables do not include data on severe absence for primary or secondary schools. This is not currently published at a national level from the daily attendance data schools submit.

Attendance downloads

Academy trusts and local authorities can download attendance data as a .csv file. The file contains aggregate absence data for each pupil in the local authority for the academic year-to-date. It is up to date to the latest Friday and updated every Monday. 

For each pupil in the local authority or academy trust, it contains:

• academic term
• UPN
• date of birth (dd/mm/yyyy)
• sex
• pupil forename
• pupil surname
• ethnicity
• compulsory school age (Y/N)
• SEN support (Y/N/Unknown)
• free school meals (Y/N/Unknown)
• LAC (Y/N/Unknown)
• PLAC (Y/N/Unknown)
• CIN (Y/N/Unknown)
• CPP (Y/N/ Unknown)
• persistently absent (Y/N)
• severely absent (Y/N)
• year group
• admission date
• leaving date
• full days missed
• possible sessions
• absent sessions
• present sessions
• approved educational activity sessions
• unauthorised absent sessions
• authorised absent sessions

For each school in the local authority:

• learning provider UKPRN
• unique reference number (URN)
• school name
• school phase
• responsible body name
• responsible body UKPRN

If a data field is not collected or shared by the school, it will show as unknown.

Attendance summary reports

Schools, local authorities and trusts can download an attendance summary report specific to them. It is based on the daily attendance data that your school shares with DfE. 

How to access your report

Your file is a Word document you can download.

To download your report:

1. Log in to view your education data using your DfE Sign-in credentials

2. Select ‘Monitor your school attendance’

3. Select ‘Your attendance summary reports’

What your report covers

The data:

• is from the start of the academic year until the end of each half or full term (each report shows the date range covered to calculate results)
• includes attendance and absence codes for each pupil (as recorded in the school’s MIS)

New files are added at the end of each half and full term. 

Schools

Your report is a summary of:

• headline attendance
• weekly attendance, compared with the national average
• attendance for different groups of pupils, including pupils with FSM and SEN support, compared with:
  • the national average
  • the previous academic year
• absence bandings by year group (including persistent and severe absence rates)

Schools get one report to cover attendance for their phase of education, for example primary or secondary. Depending on the phases of education within your school, you can receive up to 2 reports. This includes:

• middle-deemed primary schools – classed as primary
• middle-deemed secondary schools – classed as secondary
• all-through schools – both primary and secondary

Local authorities and multi-academy trusts

The report breaks down school-level attendance data by:

• headline attendance
• weekly attendance compared with the national average
• schools with the highest and lowest attendance percentage
• schools with the highest and lowest rates of persistent absence
• schools with the highest and lowest attendance percentage compared with last academic year
• attendance rates for each school by pupil group, including pupils with FSM and SEN support
• absence bandings by year group (including persistent and severe absence rates)

Local authorities receive separate reports for each phase of education and type of school. Depending on the types of schools within your local authority, you can receive up to 4 reports:

• maintained primary schools
• maintained secondary schools
• academy primary schools
• academy secondary schools

Multi-academy trusts need to have more than 2 schools in a phase of education to receive a report. You can receive up to 2 reports:

• primary schools’ summary report
• secondary schools’ summary report

If any of your schools are missing from your results, they may have been excluded.

Schools we include

Schools, local authorities and trusts will receive separate reports by school phase, for example primary or secondary.

If you do not have a report when you log in, or a school is missing from your trust or local authority report, this is normally because we do not have enough attendance data for them.

A school is excluded from attendance summary reports if it:

• is not a mainstream school
• opened during the current academic year
• has changed establishment details during the current academic year (for example, if a URN changes due to academisation)
• is sharing attendance data for less than 80% of pupils on roll and has less than 20 pupils in primary phase of education (year 1 to year 6)
• is sharing attendance data for less than 80% of pupils on roll and has less than 50 pupils in secondary phase of education (year 7 to year 11)
• has not been sharing all the required daily attendance data items from the start of the current academic year-to-date
• is using custom attendance and absence codes

Special schools do not currently have access to the reports. Special schools exist to meet complex and varying needs. It is not appropriate to compare attendance outcomes of special schools with mainstream schools.

Local authorities and multi-academy trusts must have at least 2 schools in either phase of education to receive a report. Any schools meeting the above criteria are excluded from your results.

Using your report to help improve attendance

Your summary report gives you an understanding of attendance in the 2024 to 2025 academic year.

Schools can share it with your academy trust, governing body or local authority to discuss current strategies to attendance, their effectiveness and whether alternative approaches are needed. 

Local authorities and trusts can use it to identify school-level variation and to facilitate additional support or intervention.

Reporting a problem with your results

If you are having any issues with data in your attendance summary reports, you can report an issue on the DfE customer help portal.

Data definitions we use in attendance reports

Data definitions in the reports may change and are for the academic year 2024 to 2025 only.

Sessions

For the purposes of these statistics, a ‘session’ is each morning and each afternoon when the school is open.

When the school has more than one afternoon session and therefore the attendance register is taken more than once in the same afternoon, we will use the codes for the last afternoon session as the basis for this statistical attendance data.

Possible attendance sessions

A ‘possible attendance session’ is when a pupil attended or was expected to attend. 

We calculate them using the number of sessions with attendance and absence code: /, \, B, C, C1, C2, E, G, I, J1, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, or W.

For the academic year 2023 to 2024, this included code H and J.

Any sessions that are not considered to be possible attendance sessions are excluded for the purpose of calculating these statistics. This includes sessions with attendance and absence codes: D, Q, X, Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4, Y5, Y6 and Y7.

Attendance %

Number of present sessions divided by number of possible attendance sessions.

Present sessions

Number of sessions with attendance code: /, \, B, K, L, P, V, or W.

For the academic year 2023 to 2024, this included code J.

Persistent absence

Pupil has an absence rate of 10% or more, for at least 20 possible attendance sessions in the current academic year.

To calculate these statistics for persistent absence, a pupil must have at least 20 possible attendance sessions. This helps to:

• ensure there is an accurate display of absence at all times in the academic year, based on daily data calculations
• avoid a pupil becoming persistently absent during the first few weeks of the academic year when there are less sessions to calculate absence rates on

Persistent absence rates at local authority, regional and national level are published termly on Explore Education Statistics.

DfE’s published statistics methodology can help to explain why the data may be different to that of school attendance reports.

Severely absent

Pupil has an absence rate of 50% or more for at least 20 possible attendance sessions in the current academic year.

To calculate these statistics for severely absent pupils, a pupil must have at least 20 possible sessions. This helps to:

• ensure there is an accurate display of absence at all times in the academic year, based on daily data calculations
• avoid a pupil becoming severely absent during the first few weeks of the academic year when there are less sessions to calculate absence rates on

Absence

Number of absent sessions divided by number of possible attendance sessions.

Absent sessions

Number of sessions with absence code: C, C1, C2, E, G, I, J1, M, N, O, R, S, T and U.

For the academic year 2023 to 2024, this included code H.

Unauthorised %

Number of unauthorised absence sessions divided by number of possible attendance sessions.

Unauthorised sessions

Number of sessions with absence code G, N, O or U.

Authorised %

Number of authorised absence sessions divided by number of possible attendance sessions.

Authorised sessions

Number of sessions with absence code: C, C1, C2, E, I, J1,M, R, S and T.

For the academic year 2023 to 2024, this includes code H.

Day(s) absent in part or in full

Number of unique dates with at least one absent session.

Full days absent

Number of unique dates where morning and afternoon sessions are both absent sessions (see absent sessions).

Days since last absence

Number of unique dates with at least one possible attendance session between the date of the last absent session and the date of the latest available record (see absent sessions).

Fix common user issues

If you are having any issues with data in your attendance reports, you can:

• check for known issues and fixes
• report an issue on the DfE customer help portal

Your results may not be accurate if:

• you are using any DfE attendance and absence codes incorrectly (these are available in chapter 8 of the Working together to improve school attendance guidance
• your daily attendance reports show ‘(blank)’ for some sessions – these sessions are not included
• you have a higher number of persistently or severely absent pupils showing in the system than in your MIS because you have pupils with attendance and absence data recorded after their leaving date
• your reports show pupils with no session data – these pupils have not been included
• you have not used Pupil SEN provision code K to indicate a pupil’s SEN support status