School absence rates in the UK doubled from pre-pandemic levels as a “knock-on” effect of lockdown restrictions and school closures caused by Covid-19, a new report has found.
Lower rates of attendance will remain until the generation of pupils impacted directly by the pandemic lockdowns leaves secondary school, the research from the London School of Economics (LSE) suggests.
The average rate of school absences not caused by self-isolation increased from 3.6% to 7.7% of half-day school sessions being missed in the 2018/19 and 2021/22 academic years, respectively.
Changes in attitudes towards school attendance and increased levels of mental health issues, such as anxiety, contributed towards these persistent low attendance rates, researchers suggested.
The research, published by the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance, also shows that absences were twice as persistent for pupils from low-income families and has contributed to a “widening socio-economic gap in educational achievement”.
The number of pupils who missed at least one day of school every fortnight more than quadrupled between 2019 and 2021, rising from 8% to 34%, the report found.
It also shows that a 10% increase in absences caused by local pandemic policies in 2020 lingered as a 6.5% increase in absence for the following year.
The researchers said if this trend continues, it will take until about 2027 for a return to pre-pandemic levels.
It comes ahead of a UK Covid-19 Inquiry hearing on Friday which will examine the impact of the pandemic on children and young people, including the effect on their education.
Schools across the country were closed for more than two months at the end of March 2020 as part of a national lockdown.
A phased reopening began in June 2020 but only about 25% of local authorities explicitly advised schools to follow government advice on reopening during the summer term of that year.
The study examined absence rates for 3.7 million pupils across two periods during the pandemic – June 2020 and the autumn of 2020 – when schools in England were not in national lockdown and, during the latter, were subject to local “tier” lockdown policies.
Pupils in places with stricter local lockdowns were more likely to be absent than those in more lenient areas, and those from lower socio-economic groups were “much more strongly impacted” by variations in restrictions.
The researchers said “the knock-on effects of absence in autumn 2020” help explain increases in absence rates which saw the number of pupils missing more than two days a week in 2021/22 jump to 10 times its pre-pandemic figure.
The influence of government restrictions during the pandemic is in addition to direct effects of the pandemic and school closures at the time, the authors noted.
Professor Stephen Gibbons, a professor of economic geography at LSE who co-authored the report, said: “Although it appears that school closures during the pandemic are relevant, this is only part of the story of continuing high pupil absence rates – and perhaps not the main part – with changing attitudes and an increased incidence of mental health issues such as anxieties playing a role.
“The focus now should be on trying to reduce school absences.”
He added: “It is likely that there was a shift in family attitudes to attendance during the autumn term of 2020, induced by the local public health policies, social and work restrictions of the time, that has persisted post-pandemic.
“Being prohibited from attending school in itself seems to have had little lasting impact.”
The researchers said the impact of lockdown policies on school attendance was more significant for secondary schools than earlier education, but added “we find effects on primary school attainment that are large”.
Co-author Sandra McNally, who is a professor of economics at the University of Surrey, said: “Even though absences are more prevalent in secondary school than in primary school, the effect of variation in policy restrictions comes out more strongly in subsequent primary school attainment at age 11.
“This may be because of measurement problems in GCSEs or it may be because variation in policy restrictions really did have a more severe impact on younger pupils.
“We cannot know for sure whether these results directly reflect the impact of pandemic policies on absences (which in turn influenced test scores) or whether they reflect the indirect effect of these policies on children’s mental health or family finances, which could influence future achievement without affecting attendance at school.
“The data on primary school pupils suggest that the educational effects of Covid-19 will persist unless policies are introduced to counter the consequences of pandemic-induced learning loss.”
The report is part of a Nuffield Foundation funded project titled Covid-19 and the impact of school closure, which began in July 2021 and will run until May 2025.
