Number of children off school and eligible for free meals

TENS of thousands of children and teenagers are still missing school, latest data from the Welsh Government, published on Wednesday, shows.

The number eligible for free school meals has also risen in the last year.

In the week June 6-10:

An average 87% of pupils went to school up from 86.3% the previous week;

0.5% of pupils were off for a known Covid related reason, up from 0.4% compared to the previous week;

An average of 0.4% of all primary pupils and 0.7% of all secondary pupils were absent for a known Covid related reason;

The percentage of boys attending school was higher the percentage of girls attending school.

This differs from the pattern pre-Covid when boys have had lower attendance rates;

Amongst statutory school age pupils over the week of 6 to 10 June 2022, the percentage of pupils in attendance was highest for pupils in Year 3 (92%) and lowest for pupils in Year 11 (61%) due to exams;

The most common reason for sessions missed was “illness other than Covid”, with 3.3% of sessions missed for this reason;

Pupils entitled to free school meals were less likely to attend school, with the gap being an average of 4.5 percentage points; and

25.3% of pupils (121,472 pupils) have missed more than a week of face-to-face learning for a known Covid related reason since 6 September 2021 (5.5 days or more) and 83.7% of pupils (402,326 pupils) have missed more than a week for any reason since 6 September 2021.

The latest school census for Wales, published in May shows the number of children eligible for free school meals has risen.

Of the 380,139 stautory age pupils aged 5 to 15, 26.9% were known to be eligible for free school meals or transitionally protected at February 2022 up from 25.2% in April 2021

As of February 2022 There were 470,244 pupils in local authority maintained schools, down 4,480 compared with April 2021