Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the number of pupils who were persistently absent from school in (a) north east Somerset and (b) South Gloucestershire between September 2024 and July 2025.

The department publishes figures from the school census on pupil absence in England. The latest data covers the autumn and spring terms of the 2024/25 academic year and is published here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england/2024-25-autumn-and-spring-term. This data has been available since 23 October 2025.

The published data includes numbers and rates of persistent absence by local authority, available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/917c09ab-3598-4b7e-95ac-08de11382822. Absence data from the school census is not yet available for the full 2024/25 academic year.