New €6m campaign to promote school attendance amid surge in unexplained absences

Absences due to covid severely impacted school attendance. Picture: Larry Cummins

The Department of Education has launched a new €6m campaign promoting school attendance following a significant increase in unexplained school absences in recent years.

As first reported by the Irish Examiner, unexplained school absences have quadrupled in just three years, raising concerns thousands of students missed out on crucial parts of their education.

Between September 2019 and the end of term last summer, 24.7 million school days were recorded by Tusla as "lost", with absences due to covid severely impacting attendance.

Prior to the pandemic, the average percentage of primary pupils who missed more than 20 days of school a year was 11.6%, while the equivalent percentage for post-primary students was 15%.

By 2021/22, those figures had skyrocketed to 40.3%, or 173,072 primary pupils, and 26.8% at post-primary level, numbering 69,097 students.

On Tuesday, the Department of Education and the Tusla Education Support Services (TESS) announced it was to roll out the new campaign this school term, which aims to promote the importance of attendance.

The campaign will include positive messaging, joint communications between the Department and TESS, webinars for principals, and promotional materials resources, and toolkits on attendance promotion.

"School attendance is important to support children and young people’s achievement, wellbeing, and wider development and regular engaged school attendance is a strong predictor of successful educational outcomes," said Education Minister Norma Foley. 

"The attendance campaign is timely, now that we have emerged from the covid period.

"More than ever before, we are aware of the importance of regular school attendance for our children and its impact on young people’s cognitive and social development and on their overall wellbeing, particularly in ensuring that they connect with their classmates and others in the school community." 

An analysis of figures provided by TESS to the Irish Examiner previously found poor school attendance in recent years is particularly marked in disadvantaged schools. Almost six out of 10 students in Deis Band 1 schools missed out on 20 days of class time or more from 2021 to 2022.

Due to a high correlation between poor school attendance and early school leaving, Tusla must be notified by law when a child misses more than 20 days or more of school.

Despite schools being fully open, attendance was most severely affected from September 2021 to the summer of 2022, when more than one in 10 school days were lost to absences due to illness, urgent matters, unexplained reasons, or other factors.