The Department for Education confirmed today that every mainstream state school in England will be set its own attendance target, and that performance against it will be monitored for the first time. The announcement landed alongside the latest absence statistics, which show the problem has not shifted much in a year. Here is what the change actually asks of a school, and what it does not.
What has actually changed
Individual attendance targets are not new in themselves — they were trialled widely across England last year. What is new is that every mainstream state school will now get a target, that it will take each school’s local circumstances into account, and that it will be monitored rather than simply issued.
Alongside it, the education minister Paul Waugh has asked schools to look hard at Fridays, which he describes as a particular weak spot, and to consider putting on clubs and enrichment at the end of the week. He has also said schools will get access to more data tools over the coming year, to spot pupils drifting away from regular attendance earlier.
What the numbers say
The DfE statistics published today put overall attendance at 93% for 2025/26, slightly down on the year before. Before the pandemic, attendance at English mainstream state schools was regularly above 95%.
The figure that matters more is persistent absence — missing at least 10% of sessions. That has roughly doubled, from around 10% of pupils in 2018/19 to 19% in 2025/26. Nearly one in five pupils now misses at least a tenth of the school year. Pupils on free school meals and pupils with SEND remain more likely to be absent than their peers.
One detail worth holding onto: the highest absence rate of the year came in the week beginning 22 June, during an exceptional heatwave, when close to 12% of pupils were away. Attendance responds to things well outside a school’s control.
What happens if a school misses its target?
There are no immediate penalties. The BBC understands the DfE will contact schools that are off-track to check they are aware and taking action, and may point them towards best-practice guidance or a local behaviour and attendance hub. Ofsted already considers overall attendance during inspection, so this is a new line of sight rather than a new sanction.
A target is not a plan, and software is not an intervention
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, made the point plainly: absence “isn’t a problem that they can solve alone”, with roots in illness, mental health, poverty and unmet special educational needs. That is worth repeating by anyone selling to schools, ourselves included. A system can tell you which child is slipping and when somebody last made contact. It cannot phone the family, fix a SEND placement or make a child feel safe at the gate. Those are people, and people take time nobody is funding.
Do the new attendance targets apply to schools in Wales?
No. This is a Department for Education announcement and it covers mainstream state schools in England. Attendance policy in Wales is set by the Welsh Government and inspected by Estyn, and Welsh schools are not being given DfE targets. The underlying problem of post-pandemic absence is not confined to England.
What attendance data does a school actually need?
Enough to see a pupil drifting before they become persistently absent. That means the pattern rather than the daily percentage: which sessions are being missed, whether absences are stacking up unauthorised, what else is happening for that child, and who has already made contact.
A termly attendance percentage is easy enough to produce. The harder question is the one asked in the moment — which children are on their way to 90% and what has been tried — because the attendance record, the safeguarding note and the record of the phone call home usually sit in three different places.
Where GroupEd fits
This is the part of the job GroupEd One was built around. Because attendance, absence and safeguarding live in the same record, One joins the dots on an individual pupil — a quiet drop in attendance, unauthorised absences stacking up — and flags it while there is still time to reach out. The dashboard surfaces attendance dips before they grow rather than at the end of term.
The practical work sits in the same place too. Registers are taken on any device, and absence codes, follow-ups and messages home happen from the same screen, so the chase is recorded rather than remembered. Every pupil has one page carrying attendance trends, behaviour, safeguarding flags and who in the household was contacted, and when. Parents report absences themselves from the free Parent & Carer app, which takes a surprising amount of traffic off the office first thing.
For a trust or a local authority now holding a target for each of its schools, the central dashboard shows attendance across every school live, at no charge above the school licences. The detail is on the trusts and local authorities page.
If the new targets have moved this up your list, the full picture of how attendance works day to day is on the GroupEd One page. Or book a 30-minute demo and we will run it against a school of your size rather than a demo dataset.
Figures in this article are from the Department for Education attendance statistics published on 6 August 2026, and the policy detail was reported by BBC News the same day. This article is informational and is not a statement of statutory guidance.
