Schools have faced very uncertain times since the pandemic hit us last year. Nobody knew how lockdowns and long school closures would affect school attendance and persistent absences in schools – we were truly in unprecedented times.
In May 2021 the DfE released data for the Autumn term 2020. This term coincided with the reopening of schools on 1 September 2020 and schools were expected to be open throughout the whole of the Autumn term. This was the first absence data collected via the school census covering the pandemic.
The Attendance Team at Cognus analysed this data and are happy to see that Sutton schools have reported excellent figures for the first term when compared to the national average and our neighbouring Local Authorities of Croydon, Merton and Kingston.
The main points to gather from the statistical release are:
- Attendance – Sutton has reported a higher attendance rate for the first term compared to Kingston, Croydon and Merton for primary, secondary and special schools. Sutton is also better than the national average for primary, secondary and special schools for school attendance.
- Persistent Absence – Sutton has reported fewer persistently absent pupils then the national average for primary, secondary and special schools and had fewer persistently absent pupils in primary and special schools compared to Kingston, Merton and Croydon.
The Attendance Team were in contact with most of the schools in the Borough during lockdown and recognise the difficult challenges and uncertainty schools faced. We are therefore delighted, to share some long-awaited good news, above, with regards to school attendance and persistent absence in Sutton.
You can find out more about the work the Attendance team do and take a listen to their episode of our #EducationUntapped podcast ‘’Getting your child ready for school’’ here