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<p>It is a priority to reduce overall school absence as part of the Government’s ambition
to create a world-class education system.</p><p>Data on the number of unauthorised
absences are published in the termly “Pupil absence in schools in England” statistical
releases, and can be found here:</p><p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-pupil-absence"
target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-pupil-absence</a>.</p><p>Information
for each school, local authority and England is provided in the underlying data. Information
by local authority and England is also provided in the “National and local authority”
tables.</p><p>The Department has already taken a number of steps to reduce the number
of unauthorised absence and tackle persistent absence. In 2013, the Government amended
legislation to make it clear that leave of absence could be authorised by maintained
schools only in exceptional circumstances. It is up to individual schools to decide
what constitutes exceptional circumstances.</p><p>Overall school attendance is improving,
and absence rates have followed a general downward trend since 2006-7. The Department
recognises that persistent absence is hard to tackle. Children may be persistently
absent from school for a number of reasons including long term sickness.</p><p>To
enable schools to act earlier in dealing with patterns of poor attendance, the Department
has tightened up the definition of persistent absence in national statistics and equipped
schools and local authorities with a range of sanctions they can use to tackle poor
attendance. This includes penalty notices, parenting orders, fast track programmes,
parenting contracts, and ultimately prosecution.</p>
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