This is a case study for V4: Innovation and improvement.
Prior to March 2020, the Department for Education (DfE) published termly and annual pupil absence data based on information provided to them through the school census, with a lag of around two terms. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, school attendance became a key societal issue and there was a strong need for real-time data at a national level.
Initially, DfE introduced a form for schools and colleges in England to complete manually each day. Whilst this approach provided DfE with the key information that was needed, it placed a high burden on schools and so DfE explored options for automating the collection.
DfE rapidly set up a new system which automatically collects daily attendance data from schools. This method of data collection was revolutionary for the department and its stakeholders and, because it is automated, it created no additional burden for schools. This was done on a voluntary basis to start with and reached a rate of 90% of schools choosing to participate, before the collection became mandatory at the start of the 2024/25 academic year.
The first outputs from these collections were published in September 2022 and have been published on a fortnightly basis to meet user needs, which considerably reduces the lag. The information is presented in a bulletin and a dashboard. The figures relate to the attendance of 5-to-15-year-old pupils in state-funded primary, secondary and special schools in England, and includes breakdowns for pupil groups.
This real-time automated collection has enabled policy makers in DfE to respond rapidly to arising issues, identify trends in attendance, and quickly understand and spread practice from areas showing improvements. For example, during the teacher strikes in 2023, DfE was able to produce rapid transparency data on the number of schools that were closed on strike days. Schools and local authorities are also able to use the attendance information operationally to more efficiently monitor absence by identifying pupils who need support earlier and benchmark themselves, saving time and enabling earlier intervention.
In 2023, these statistics won the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) Campion Award for Excellence in Official Statistics. The RSS noted that “the judges considered this to be an example of agile, useful data provision and an exemplar for other to follow. They were also impressed with the efforts made to ensure transparency so the findings could be communicated to a broad audience, as well as the use of new administrative data.”