Since the commencement of the Education (Welfare) Act, 2000, schools are obliged by law to submit a report to the NEWB on the levels of school attendance. The Annual Attendance Report is submitted by each school when they close for the summer. Schools were asked for the total number of student days lost through absence, the number of students absent for 20 days or more and the number of students who were expelled.

The National Educational Welfare Board’s (NEWB) report of the Analysis of School Attendance Data in Primary and Post-Primary Schools, 2006/06 – 2007/08 shows that the percentage of student days lost through absence has remained stable over the last five years.

Over 57,000 students miss school each day, consisting of approximately 31,500 primary and 26,000 post-primary students.  This is a loss of 12 school days per student per year in primary school and 13 days per year in post-primary school.

About 12% of primary school students (58,000) and 17% of post-primary students (57,000) were absent for 20 days or more during the school year 2006/2007 and 2007/2008.  However, there were considerable differences between schools. Some schools will have had no pupils absent for twenty or more days while others will have more than one fifth (20%) of pupils missing this number of days. 

Since the commencement of the Education (Welfare) Act, 2000, schools are obliged by law to submit an Annual Attendance Report (AAR) to the NEWB on the levels of school attendance each year. High response rates to the AAR, (95.00%) at primary school and post-primary (91%), indicate that absenteeism is taken seriously by schools. It also means that data provided by the AAR now constitute a national data base and can be used to monitor non-attendance, expulsion and suspension in all of the country’s primary and post-primary schools.

While attendance is a national issue, Irish figures are similar to those in Northern Ireland and the UK. Non attendance in Irish primary schools was 5.7% of student/days in 2007/8 compared to between 4.9% and 6.7% for Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.  Non-attendance for post-primary schools was 7.7% of student days, compared to between 7.3% and 9.1%.

Expulsions were rare in primary schools. Only 12 expulsions were reported in primary schools in 2006/7 and 15 in 2007/8.  The corresponding figures in post-primary schools were 151 and 136, accounting for just 0.05% of students. 

The number of suspensions in post-primary schools was 20 times higher than the primary schools figure.  The analysis of the data also revealed that schools with high levels of non-attendance are more likely to have higher proportions of pupils living in local authority accommodation, more lone-parent families, and more families where the main earner in unemployed.  Higher levels of non-attendance are also associated with poverty, lower academic performance, higher dropout rates and poorer performance in the Junior Certificate Examination.

Analysis of School Attendance Data in Primary and Post-Primary Schools 2006/07 and 2007/08
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