100,000 persistently absent school leavers on course to join one million young people not in work, education or training at £24 billion lifetime cost
Severely absent pupils – those missing over half of schooltime – hits new autumn term record of 151,279, up 195 per cent since 2018/19
32 million days of school missed in autumn 2025/26, 11 million more than in autumn term 2018/19, as progress on persistent absence goes into reverse
Think tank calls on ministers to adopt emergency plan to prevent “tragedy of wasted potential”
A record number of pupils missed more school than they attended in autumn term 2025/26, prompting calls for the new Education Secretary to make tackling severe absence an urgent priority.
Analysis by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) of Department for Education figures published today shows that 151,279 pupils were severely absent in autumn 2025/26, meaning they missed at least 50 per cent of schooltime.
This was an increase of 3,674 pupils, or 2.5 per cent, compared with autumn 2024/25, taking severe absence to its highest recorded level for an autumn term. The rate of severe absence has almost tripled since 2018/19.
Recent progress on persistent absence has also gone into reverse, rising to 1,293,073 pupils missing 10 per cent or more of school in autumn 2025/26 (18.1 per cent of pupils).
This compares to 1,284,005 in autumn 2024/25 (17.8 per cent of pupils) and 759,252 in autumn 2018/19 (10.9 per cent of pupils).
In total, the CSJ estimates that the equivalent of 32 million school days were lost to absence in autumn 2024/25, translating to 11 million more days of lost learning than in autumn 2018/2019.
New analysis from the think tank published today also warns that the number of persistently absent Year 11 pupils set to join the one million not in employment, education or training (NEET) could be as high as 100,000 by 2029 – unless urgent action is taken.
More than 65,000 absent pupils who have already left school since 2024 are on course to become persistently NEET, the CSJ estimates using data on the link between school absence and worklessness.
If the new Secretary of State urgently reduced absence to pre-pandemic levels, this could see an estimated 40,000 fewer young people set to become NEET.
Persistent absence at school is associated with a 3.9-times greater risk of being not in education, employment or training between the ages of 16 and 18, and a 6.3-times greater risk of being persistently NEET.
The CSJ warns that tackling the absence crisis is key to ending the conveyor belt from education to unemployment. They are calling on the new Education Secretary to put it at the top of her agenda, including by building stronger technical pathways from school into employment.
Failure to do so would incur a lifetime cost to the taxpayer of over £24 billion, the CSJ estimates, through lost tax receipts, higher welfare payments and spending on public services.
Severe absence is particularly concentrated among some of the most disadvantaged pupils.
Children eligible for free school meals were 3.7 times more likely to be severely absent than pupils who were not eligible. The severe-absence rate was 3.6 per cent among pupils eligible for free school meals, compared with 1.0 per cent among other pupils.
Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities were also substantially more likely to miss at least half their schooling.
The severe-absence rate was 7.4 per cent among pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan and 3.7 per cent among pupils receiving SEN support, compared with 0.9 per cent among pupils with no identified special educational need.
Joe Shalam, Policy Director at the CSJ, said:
“Everyone hoped the school absence crisis would be a post-pandemic blip, but today’s figures show this crisis is sadly getting even worse.
“Time out of the classroom is having a devastating impact on the life chances of thousands of children and young people. We cannot afford to take a timid approach to this issue.
“Given the clear link between school absence and ending up out of work, ministers should adopt our plan to restore the expectations on parents to get young people through the school gates, while expanding the support for those struggling the most.
“Failure to fix this crisis is ending up as a tragedy of wasted potential.”
The CSJ’s landmark report on school absence, Absent Ambition, identified three “root causes” of the absence crisis:
- A mutual breakdown of trust between families and schools. Four in five headteachers said they had experienced abuse from parents in the previous year, while one in ten reported having been physically attacked. At the same time, polling for the CSJ found that almost half of British parents of school-age children (44 per cent) think it is “reasonable” for a pupil to miss one in every 10 days of school – in other words to be “persistently absent”. Two in five secondary school parents (42 per cent) said “most of what my child gets taught in school is unlikely to help them in later life”.
- Deteriorating educational ambition. More than two in five parents of secondary-school pupils, 42 per cent, told CSJ polling that they believed most of what their children were taught would not help them in later life. The absence tracker argues that too many young people lack pathways into work outside the traditional GCSE-to-A-level-to-university route.
- An increasingly challenging parenting landscape. Disruptive home environments, family instability, poor mental and emotional health, deprivation and changing attitudes towards daily attendance can all make it harder for children to remain engaged with school. Children living with neither biological parent are almost three times as likely to be persistently absent as those living with both, while some parents who want their children to return to school struggle to obtain the support they need.
The CSJ’s recommendations to tackle the school absence crisis include:
- A mandatory Attendance Awareness Course for parents whose children repeatedly miss school without a valid reason, explaining the impact of absence on educational and employment prospects. Parents who refuse to attend without good reason would face a fine of up to £200.
- A national rollout of attendance mentors to provide intensive, practical support to families of severely absent pupils, particularly those with complex needs or SEND, drawing on the most effective local approaches.
- A stronger focus on school readiness, including a nationally agreed definition of what children should be able to do when starting Reception, better guidance for parents through the two-to-two-and-a-half-year health review, supportive parenting classes and further expansion of Family Hubs.
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