Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have considered the case for requiring schools to share their pupil absences data with local councils.

Government guidance sets out that schools of all types, Local Authorities and other local partners should work jointly and share data on individual cases where it is of benefit to the pupil.

Under Regulation 12 of The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, all schools are required to share pupil absence data with Local Authorities for pupils who fail to attend school regularly or have been absent from school for a continuous period of ten or more school days. Local Authorities also have access to state funded schools’ attendance data under The Education (Information About Individual Pupils) (England) Regulations 2013, which underpin the school census data collection.

Local Authorities can also access near real time attendance data from state funded schools that are voluntarily sharing daily attendance data. Approximately 80% of these schools have opted to share daily data. This data is automatically extracted and returned in the form of interactive reports to the school and relevant multi academy trust and Local Authority.