Fergus Finlay: 1 in 4 primary students missed a month of school — is Ireland facing an attendance crisis?

School absences in Ireland have skyrocketed post-pandemic, with disadvantaged areas hit hardest. Urgent reform is needed now

Before the pandemic, absences from schools had been dropping but despite a return to normality, more than a quarter of primary schoolchildren, and more than a fifth of post-primary students missed at least a month of school days during the 2022/23 school year.

Yesterday’s Irish Examiner had a really disturbing story, from Education Correspondent Jess Casey, highlighting the fact that more and more children are missing school ever since the pandemic. The figures are actually frightening. More than a quarter of primary school children missed a month of school during the most recent school year for which statistics are available. That’s one in four at primary level — and it was one in five at second level.

And the more disadvantaged the area in which the school was, the higher the numbers. Up to 42% in Deis primary schools.