Nearly One in Five Pupils Is Still Persistently Absent — What the New School Attendance Targets Mean for Your Child

The headline number, and what it actually means

The latest DfE attendance figures show that 18.78% of pupils in England were persistently absent during the 2025/26 academic year up to 10 July. That is close to one in five, and it remains stubbornly above the pre-pandemic norm of around one in nine.

A pupil is counted as "persistently absent" if they miss 10% or more of school sessions — roughly one day a fortnight across the year, whether the absence is authorised or not. It is not a label the school pins on your child; it is a statistical threshold used by the Department for Education (DfE) to track patterns.

The number matters now because, from September 2026, every state-funded school in England will be judged against a specific attendance target of its own — and Ofsted's new inspection framework already treats attendance as a stand-alone judgement. If your child's absences have been flagged this term, it is worth understanding why the temperature has risen.

What ABIEs are, in plain English

ABIE stands for Attendance Baseline Improvement Expectation. The Department for Education has announced that around 600,000 pupils in 800 schools will have access to support from heads who have successfully taken action on attendance and behaviour. Alongside that support, ministers are setting a numerical expectation for every school.

Every state funded school in England will be given an individual attendance target. The new Attendance Baseline Improvement Expectations (ABIEs) set minimum improvement expectations year by year, calibrated using AI against an individual school's previous attendance and benchmarked against similar schools.

In practical terms:

• A school with weaker attendance in 2024–25 will be expected to improve by a larger margin than a school that is already performing well.
• The targets are minimums, not ceilings. A school hitting its ABIE is not "done" — it is meeting the floor.
• While this initiative will not come into force until September 2026, schools have received an indicative ABIE for the 2025/26 academic year in their similar schools report to help prepare.

So although the formal regime starts next academic year, many schools are already acting as though it were live — which is why parents are seeing sharper letters, earlier phone calls, and more frequent attendance meetings this term.

What happens if a school misses its target?

Less than many parents assume, at least at first. There are no immediate penalties for missing your target. Schools that fall short will hear from the DfE and be pointed towards best practice guidance or a local Attendance and Behaviour Hub.

The hubs are the carrot; Ofsted is the stick. Under the new inspection framework rolled out from November 2025, Ofsted introduces a new inspection framework from November 2025, with report cards, a five-point grading scale, and greater focus on inclusion. Attendance now sits as its own graded area on the report card, alongside inclusion, curriculum, teaching, and achievement. A school that consistently misses its ABIE is likely to see that reflected in the attendance judgement — and, in turn, in how the school is publicly described.

For parents, the practical read-across is that head teachers are under real pressure to bring numbers up. That pressure is being passed down the line to attendance officers, form tutors, and — eventually — to families.

Why the rules have tightened for parents too

The other lever is the register itself. Schools and academy trusts already have legal duties under the Education Act 1996 to keep accurate registers, report absences, and work with local authorities on enforcement. On top of that, the July 2026 update to the statutory guidance Working Together to Improve School Attendance sharpens how absences must be recorded, how quickly parents must be contacted, and when penalty notices are triggered.

Penalty notices for unauthorised absence — most commonly issued for term-time holidays — have been on a national tariff since August 2024. A first offence is £80 if paid within 21 days, rising to £160 between 22 and 28 days. A second offence within three years is a flat £160 with no discount. Repeat cases can be referred to the magistrates' court, where fines rise sharply.

There is no legal right of appeal against a penalty notice. If you believe one has been issued in error, the route is to write to the local authority that issued it, not to the school.

What to do if your child's attendance has been flagged

Getting a letter that mentions "persistent absence" can feel accusatory, especially if the absences were for genuine illness. A calm, structured response works better than either arguing the number or ignoring it.

Ask for the actual figures. Schools track attendance session by session (morning and afternoon). Ask for a printout covering the current academic year and, if useful, the last one. This lets you see whether the pattern is one long absence, scattered days, or a particular day of the week.

Separate the causes. Physical illness, anxiety, medical appointments, bullying, undiagnosed SEND, and family circumstances all show up in the same statistic but need very different responses. Be honest with the school about what is actually going on. A school that knows a child is being investigated for autism, for example, cannot help if the family has not told them.

Ask what the school is proposing. Many schools now offer a graduated response: an attendance meeting, then a support plan, then — if things do not improve — a formal referral to the local authority. Ask which stage you are at and what would move you off the pathway.

Get medical evidence in writing where relevant. If your child has a long-term condition, a GP or specialist letter can shift a run of absences from "unauthorised" to "authorised". This does not remove them from the persistent-absence count, but it changes the tone of the conversation and the risk of a penalty notice.

Watch for school refusal, not just absence. Repeated Monday absences, tearful mornings, or complaints of stomach aches that vanish by 10am are often the earliest signs of emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA). This is now widely recognised by local authorities and needs a different pathway from ordinary illness — usually involving the SENCO and, where available, a mental health support team.

Where tutoring fits — and where it doesn't

Tutoring is not a solution to non-attendance itself. A child who is anxious about school will not become less anxious because a tutor turns up at the kitchen table.

Where it can help is the gap that opens up after a stretch of absence. Children who have missed six weeks of Year 9 maths do not automatically catch up when they return; they sit through lessons they cannot follow, which makes attendance harder in turn. A few sessions of one-to-one support, focused specifically on the topics missed, can break that cycle. For pupils who have moved to part-time timetables while a longer plan is put in place, tutoring can also cover the ground the school day no longer does.

If you are considering it, be specific with the tutor: "she missed the whole of the trigonometry unit in the autumn term" is a workable brief. "She's fallen behind" is not.

The short version

Persistent absence in England is still running near one in five pupils. From September 2026, every school will have its own DfE-set improvement target, and Ofsted's new report cards will grade attendance as its own line item. Expect schools to be more proactive — earlier calls, more meetings, quicker referrals. If your child is being flagged, ask for the data, be honest about the cause, and press the school for a written plan. The system now assumes that schools and families work on this together; the parents who get the best outcomes are the ones who treat it that way from the first letter.