'Deeply concerning': Yorkshire and the Humber has highest unauthorised absence rate in England

Almost one in 20 pupils were not in school without an authorised reason, at 4.25 per cent in the final week of the school year.

This was the highest unauthorised absence rate in England, according to Department for Education data published yesterday.

The South East had the lowest rate at 2.92 per cent. At the start of the school year, Yorkshire’s unauthorised absence rate was much lower, at 2.27 per cent.

Since the Covid pandemic, there has been a huge rise in unauthorised absences in schools, with the rate more than doubling across Yorkshire and the Humber.

It consistently has some of the highest absence rates in England alongside the North East.

Experts have told this paper how this will have a significant impact on these children’s life chances.

Anna Heuschkel, an education policy expert at the Centre for Young Lives think tank, said: “It is deeply concerning that so many children in Yorkshire and Humberside are out of school.

“This can lead to children falling through the gaps and into harm, or to poorer life chances.

“It is one of the drivers of the persistent attainment gap between lower income areas of the North and other parts of the country and is bad for the North’s economic prosperity.

“The new Government must go beyond incremental change if it is to put inclusion at the heart of our education system and provide more intense support for those children who are missing large amounts of school, so that they can re-engage with education.

“We want to see a dedicated programme of support to prioritise getting these children back into school, with ambitious targets and a specific focus on those children persistently absent and those children missing from education entirely.

“This is fundamental to ensuring every child has access to an excellent education, no matter their background, and to boosting opportunity and economic growth in the North of England.”

Only last month, the previous education secretary Bridget Phillipson announced a new package of attendance support, including personalised tools for schools that are based on real-time data showing patterns over the year.

New analysis, published today by IPPR, has found that life satisfaction among young people in England has been in steady decline since 2010, while instances of bullying and not feeling a sense of belonging are far higher than OECD peers.

The proportion of young people who are satisfied with their lives has fallen from 62 per cent in 2010 to 44 per cent today among 16 to 24-year-olds.

In England’s most deprived areas, the number of young people who are satisfied with life has fallen from over half to just a third.

IPPR says the findings are evidence of a wider crisis in young people’s wellbeing, in which childhood and adolescence increasingly feel isolating, pressured and unforgiving.

The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found pupils, parents and schools feel the wellbeing of students is a “major factor” behind rising absence rates since the pandemic, including online bullying via social media.