Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish, by each local authority area in England, the number of secondary school pupils who were absent from school as a result of either testing positive for covid-19 or being required to self-isolate during the period from 1 September 2020 to the start of the 2020 autumn half-term; and if he will publish those statistics by year group.

The Department intends to publish local authority level data on 15 December. This data will be included as part of the publication ‘Attendance in education and early years settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak’.

The frequency of the publication ‘Attendance in education and early years settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak’ will be reviewed in the new year.

The Department is constantly reviewing the content of its publications. Announcements about future content will be made through the official statistics release page which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education/about/statistics.