KeyData guide

Sources: Attendance – termly school census

Attendance data is calculated from the attendance data captured retrospectively in the school and pupil census, and is based on compulsory school-age children only.

The Department of Education (DfE) release their official school-level figures and this is what is used in KeyData.

Because the data is captured only three times a year during the school and pupil census, the attendance data is always released late in the year. For example, the DfE do not publish their full year attendance data until March the following year.

Data provided:

• Two term data - Autumn and Spring
• Full Year data – All 3 terms. This is the DfE’s preferred measure – “Only the full year absence release gives a definitive view of pupil absence.”

The different measures are:

• Total absence (authorised and un-authorised absence)
• Persistent absence: 10% (possible sessions) – from 2016 the DfE are now using a new calculation based on the percentage of pupils who missed 10% of their own personal number of sessions actually available.

(All displayed as percentages)