New research has highlighted the ‘endemic’ scale of school absence in Scotland, with nearly a third of pupils across the country now recorded as being ‘persistently absent’.

A new report called ‘Where have all the children gone?’ uses government data from Scotland and England to investigate the state of school attendance. It finds that rates of ‘persistent absence’ are far higher amongst Scottish pupils than they for those living south of the border.

The report also criticises the lack of data on attendance in Scottish schools and calls on the government to take action to address ‘the school absence crisis sweeping Scotland’.

The analysis has been carried out by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), an influential think-tank co-founded by former UK Conservative leader Iain Duncan-Smith. It is based in London and has a “growing network of regional offices.”

In reviewing overall attendance data for Scotland, CSJ researchers noted that there has been an increase in general absence from schools, with 2022/23 figures recording that 6.1 percent of half days – referred to as ‘sessions’ in the data – were marked as ‘authorised absence’.

A further 3.7 percent marked as unauthorised absence and in both cases these levels represent a marked increase since pre-pandemic data from 2018/19.

The report also explicitly highlights the rates of ‘persistent absence’, which is when a pupil misses more than ten percent of available sessions – the equivalent to one full day off every fortnight.

The most recent national data for Scotland shows that 32.5 percent of pupils were persistently absent in 2022/23, but in England this figure is more than ten percentage points lower at just 21.2 percent. Across Scotland, persistent absence figures were 41 percent in secondary schools, 39 percent in special schools, and 26 percent in primary schools.

The CSJ notes that previous government publications do not contain data on persistent absence rates, but refers to earlier research by Reform Scotland that estimated that 21 percent of children were persistently absent in 2018/19. On that basis, the CSJ estimates that persistent absence has increased by around eleven percentage points since the final pre-pandemic year.

The report also estimates that 2.7 per cent of pupils were severely absent – meaning that they missed more than 50 percent of possible school sessions – in the year 2022/23, up from 1.6 percent pre-pandemic. However, researchers point out that “severe absence is currently not monitored in any official Scottish Government statistics” and explain that they had to use FOI requests to councils for this section of the report.

Analysis of FOI responses also revealed that a child with additional support needs is nearly four times more likely to be severely absent from school than their peers.

In order to address the problems with school attendance, the CSJ recommends three specific actions that the Scottish Government should follow.

Firstly, it advises the publication of termly data on school attendance. At present, school attendance data for Scotland is only published once every two year. The CSJ also calls for the creation of National Parental Participation Strategy which would “create a new duty for schools to focus on parental participation and publish parental participation plans”. Neither of these policies are estimated to cost the government anything to implement.

The report also argues for the nationwide introduction of “200 attendance mentors to work with families to understand and remove the underlying barriers to school attendance.” The CSJ estimates that this would cost £8m per year.

Kenneth Ferguson, Head of the Centre for Social Justice in Scotland, said: 

“The number of Scottish children missing school is truly shocking – kids who don’t go to school cannot benefit from school.  The government appears to have no idea of the scale of the crisis, who and where these kids are, and whether they are receiving any kind of education or not.

“Failure to get these children back to school will have enduring consequences for them, for wider society and for the economy.  The Scottish government’s policy to only publish the most basic attendance data every two years – with 2022/23 marking  the first release of persistent absence data – is unacceptable.  It urgently needs to track and publish termly detail of school absence alongside a package of support to rebuild the relationships between school and families.”

Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP Willie Rennie, who wrote the foreword to the report, said:

“The First Minister oversaw the education system during the pandemic and has acknowledged failings during that period.  Now the government lacks the vision and ambition to undo the damage done. The education recovery plan after the pandemic was no different from the education recovery plan before the pandemic.  The Scottish Government has fallen asleep at the wheel and is veering towards a crisis of epic proportions that could affect our children’s lives for years to come.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said:

“The Education Secretary is determined to improve attendance in Scotland’s schools and we are working with Education Scotland to deliver on the actions of the recent review.

“The Scottish Government will publish whole year attendance and absence stats on an annual basis later this year - beginning with the 2023-24 school year.

“In recognition of the challenge of persistent absence, the Chief Inspector for Education has also been tasked with addressing this during school inspections and to identify successful approaches which can be shared more widely.”