FOI Request - Pupil Absence and Attendance Rates

Request 101003854066

Scope and timeframe

Please provide the following recorded information relating to pupil attendance and absence in schools:
A. Monthly time-series (recent)

For the period 1 August 2023 to the most recent complete month, for each school (if routinely held at school level; otherwise provide service-level totals), please provide:
1. Sessions possible, sessions present, authorised absence sessions, unauthorised absence sessions.
2. Derived attendance rate and absence rate (if routinely reported).
3. Where held, a split by stage/phase (primary/secondary/special).

B. Annual indicators (historic)
For academic years 2015/16 to 2024/25 (year-to-date), please provide school-level annual totals of:
1. Attendance rate and absence rate (authorised/unauthorised).
2. Persistent absence: count and percentage of pupils meeting your persistent absence threshold (please state the threshold and how it is calculated).
3. Sessions possible and sessions lost (authorised/unauthorised) to enable calculation/validation.

C. Reason codes (if routinely recorded)
For the years above, service-level totals of absence by reason code (e.g., illness, medical/dental, exclusion, family holiday, truancy/late after close of register, other). Please include the reason code list/definitions currently in use.

D. Equalities/need-to-know breakdowns (where routinely held and disclosable)
For service-level totals only (not school-level), per academic year:
1. Absence/attendance by SIMD quintile.
2. By sex and ASN status.
(Only where already produced and disclosable without identification risk; otherwise omit.)

E. Policies / management information
1. The current attendance/absence policy and any guidance to schools on coding reasons.
2. Any internal dashboards or committee reports since 1 August 2023 summarising attendance/absence trends.

Format
Please supply data in a machine-readable format (CSV or XLSX). For datasets, fields such as school_name, school_code, month, sessions_possible, present, authorised_absence, unauthorised_absence, attendance_rate, stage are ideal. For annual tables, include academic_year.
Definitions / disclosure control
• Scotland’s attendance data are normally counted in sessions (half-days); please confirm if you use sessions or days.
• I seek aggregate, anonymised figures only; no personal data. Apply standard disclosure control (e.g., suppress values <5) where necessary.

Advice & assistance / cost
If you estimate this may exceed the section 12 cost limit, please advise under section 15 how to refine—e.g., provide service-level rather than school-level for some elements, shorten the timeframe, or use existing management exports.

Published information
If any information is already published (section 25), please provide the direct URL and precise document/table location.

Information not held / exemptions
If any part is not held (section 17), please state this explicitly. If information is withheld, please provide a schedule of items withheld, the exemption/exception relied upon, and the public-interest test where applicable.