Student and teacher absence persists in secondary schools

Teacher Tapp’s 2024-25 end of year report reveals that student absence was a major worry, with 69 per cent of primary and 80 per cent of secondary teachers saying it was disrupting learning.

Although this figure is similar to last year’s (71 per cent and 82 per cent), it is a sizeable increase from 2023, when the overall rate was 55 per cent.

This school year, almost one in two (49 per cent) of secondary teachers had a student arrive late to a lesson, though only 15 per cent of primary school teachers experienced this. All subjects are equally hit for lateness, with no subject reporting higher levels of lateness than others.

48 per cent of secondary teachers said that internal truancy is a bigger problem than just truancy, meaning that problem is not fixed simply by getting students into school.

As for teachers, one third of (34 per cent) of those in secondary schools had three or more days of sick, though in primary schools that figure drops to 28 per cent.

41 per cent of primary school teachers had no sick days at all, with 35 per cent of secondary school teachers also taking none.

Teacher absence caused problems for GCSE classes, particularly sciences, maths and English. More than half of respondents in those subjects said that their exam classes were affected by long-term teacher absence.