Attitude leads to attendance

Some great data from the ERO on student attendance. They find:

• Now nearly six in ten students (58 percent) are attending regularly, up from four in ten (40 percent) in 2022.
• Attitudes drive attendance, students are 1.7 times more likely to attend regularly if they think daily attendance is important.
• Almost a third of students (28 percent) report they never want to miss school – up from 15 percent in 2022
• Encouragingly, students in schools in low socio-economic communities show double the improvement in attitudes to daily attendance (12 percentage point increase compared to 6 percentage points for students in high socio-economic communities) and now have better attitudes to daily attendance than other students.

A long way to go, but getting attitudes right is the crucial first step.