The summer GCSE exam season is now just around the corner for a whole new cohort of Yorkshire students.
All candidates and their families will have worked hard, and will no doubt be hoping to do well. But just how well they do can be highly influenced by their attendance - and when it comes to keeping pupil absence rates low, some local secondary schools shine especially bright.
A recent Department for Education report has found that pupils who attended school nearly every day in Year 11 were almost twice as likely to achieve a Grade 5 in their English and Maths GCSEs as those who only attended 90 to 95% of the time. This means that missing just 10 days of school reduces the likelihood of getting a strong pass by around 50%.
The Government has now released its full absence and attendance figures for the most recent 2023/24 school year. Despite showing a small improvement on last year, the overall absence rate - the percentage of half-days missed for all pupils - still lingers well above pre-pandemic figures. The amount of ‘persistently absent’ pupils missing at least 10% of these half-day sessions also remains incredibly high - affecting 1 in 5 children.
Included with the Government’s attendance figures was the absence data for each state-funded secondary school in England. This meant we were able to see which schools had the country’s lowest overall absence rates. We’ve now taken a closer look at how South Yorkshire’s schools have performed across the Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster and Sheffield City council areas, to create a league table of those with the lowest rates of pupils missing class for any reason.
We’ve only included schools with absence rates of 7.5% or lower, an outstanding achievement for any school community, while private and special schools have been excluded. It will likely come as no surprise that many were also featured amongst South Yorkshire’s top schools for GCSE performance in the last school year.
Here were the 13 local secondary schools that met our criteria:
9. The Hayfield School
This is a secondary academy in Auckley, just east of Doncaster. Another high performer, it had a ‘well above average’ Progress 8 score last year. In the 2023/24 school year, it had an absence rate of 7.17%. | Google
10. King Ecgbert School
King Ecgbert is a secondary academy and sixth form in Dore, southwest of Sheffield. It too had a ‘well above average’ Progress 8 score last year. In the 2023/24 school year, it had an absence rate of 7.18%. | Google
11. XP School
XP is a secondary free school and sixth form in Doncaster. In the 2023/24 school year, it had an absence rate of 7.43%. | Google
12. Wickersley School and Sports College
This is a secondary academy and sixth form in Wickersley, just east of Rotherham. In the 2023/24 school year, it had an absence rate of 7.46%. | Google