Schools fail to report absences

Dozens of schools did not meet a legal requirement to report pupil attendance figures in at least three years between 2007 and 2011 and five made no returns at all.

Schools have to send a report to the National Educational Welfare Board (NEWB) every summer listing the numbers of days lost through student absence, how many students were absent for 20 days or more, and the number of students expelled, or suspended.

The data is used to compile national statistics showing yearly rates of absenteeism, and more than 95% of schools now do so annually. However, a list of schools provided by the NEWB under freedom of information (FoI) law shows almost 200 of the country’s 4,000 primary and second-level schools did not submit an annual attendance report (AAR) in 2009.