Significant rise in city pupil absences since pandemic
The rate of students in Portsmouth persistently absent from school has risen substantially since the pandemic hit, new figures show.
School leaders’ union NAHT said significant bolstering of funds to support students is needed if the Government is "serious about getting more pupils back into the classroom".
As part of our ongoing series looking at the Covid-19 pandemic's impact on society over the past four years, analysis figures from the Department for Education show 5,857 students in state-funded schools across Portsmouth missed a tenth or more of sessions.
The school day is split into a morning and afternoon session, with every child expected to attend all sessions.
These students accounted for 22.5% of the 26,083 students enrolled in the area during the 2022-23 academic year. It was up significantly from 13.4% per cent in 201819, before the pandemic.
Across England, 1.6 million pupils were persistently absent – making up 21.2 per cent of students.
It is a slight improvement from 22.5 per cent in 202122, but nearly double the level in 2018-19 when just 10.9 per cent of pupils were persistently absent.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of NAHT, said: "School leaders and teachers are doing all they can to reverse the increase in pupils who are persistently absent post-pandemic, and we are pleased to see the number of children coming back into school is moving in the right direction.
"However, absence rates are still significantly higher than before Covid and much more needs to be done to bring them down."
He added: "If the Government is serious about getting more pupils back into the classroom, there must be a significant bolstering of funding for the services that support schools including children’s social care, and mental health."
In Portsmouth, 724,000 of 8,837,000 school sessions were missed. Of these, 283,000 (3.2 per cent) were unauthorised. It was up from 2 per cent in 2018-19.
Nationally, the level of unauthorised absences nearly doubled, from 1.4 per cent of sessions in 2018-19 to 2.4 per cent in the last academic year.