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Special Educational Needs: Absenteeism

Question for Department for Education

UIN 41768, tabled on 26 March 2025

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of pupils who are persistently absent from school have been identified as having special educational needs and disabilities.

Answered on

22 April 2025

The department publishes figures from the school census on pupil absence in state-funded schools. The latest data, including breakdowns by characteristic, covers the 2023/24 academic year and is published here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england.

The following table provides the number of pupils who were persistently absent, by special educational needs provision: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/b158c055-7dcf-49ad-938b-08dd6ba01329.