Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what monitoring arrangements her Department has in place to evaluate the impact of the attendance improvement roadmap on pupil outcomes.

To monitor progress against our journey to return to pre-pandemic levels of attendance and beyond, the department collects comprehensive attendance data to track trends and identify what is working well and where the system needs support.

Our world leading data tools allow us to monitor real time attendance across all state-funded schools. By analysing this data at national, regional, and school level, we can assess progress towards pre-pandemic levels and ensure interventions are targeted where they will have the greatest impact on pupil outcomes.

Support provided through Attendance and Behaviour Hubs and our expanded mentoring programme, is subject to ongoing monitoring and quality assurance by regional advisers and will be independently evaluated to assess their impact on attendance and pupil outcomes.

Thanks to the efforts of the sector, absence is moving in the right direction, with children gaining over five million more days in school last year compared to the previous year.