What is a good school attendance rate?
Attendance is often described as “good”, “poor” or “excellent”. There is, however, no single national DfE percentage that automatically defines good attendance for every pupil.
In short
Schools are expected to promote high attendance, but attendance cannot be reduced to one universal target.
The important official statistical threshold is persistent absence, which begins when a pupil has missed 10% or more of their possible sessions.
Is 95% attendance good?
A 95% attendance rate means approximately 5% of possible school sessions have been missed. Across a 190-day school year, 5% is approximately 9.5 school days.
That calculation makes the percentage easier to picture, but 95% is not an official national definition of good attendance. Individual circumstances matter.
What about 90% attendance?
A pupil with 90% attendance has missed approximately 10% of their possible sessions — the point at which they would normally meet the statistical definition of persistent absence. Across an illustrative 190-day year, that is around 19 school days.
What is the national attendance rate?
This is a national aggregate across the sessions represented in the data. It should not be treated as a target for an individual pupil or school.
Should a school's attendance simply be compared with the national average?
National figures provide useful context, but a simple above-or-below comparison has limits. Attendance varies significantly by school phase, pupil age, SEND, disadvantage, geography and other characteristics.
Secondary schools, for example, have higher absence rates than primary schools nationally (7.75% against 5.12% in autumn term 2025/26). A more useful analysis asks how attendance differs, which pupils are facing the greatest barriers, how the position is changing, and whether what the school is doing appears to be helping.
High expectations and individual circumstances
DfE statutory guidance, Working together to improve school attendance, expects schools to set high attendance expectations. It also expects them to consider the individual needs of pupils and families and to understand the barriers that may be preventing regular attendance.
Good attendance practice is therefore not simply about chasing a single percentage. It includes identifying patterns early, understanding causes and providing appropriate support.
Use percentages carefully
A helpful way to discuss attendance is to translate percentages into sessions or days. Over an illustrative 190-day year:
- 96% attendance sounds close to 100%, but corresponds to approximately 7.6 days missed.
- 90% attendance corresponds to approximately 19 days missed.
Expressed that way, the practical scale of the difference becomes much clearer.
Explore the data yourself
Compare overall absence across every region and local authority, and see where any area sits against the England figure.
Explore attendance rates →About this guidance
This page explains publicly available school attendance statistics and guidance for England. tutor2u uses Department for Education data and primary government guidance wherever possible. Every figure shown is calculated directly from the published DfE data files rather than transcribed by hand.
Attendance statistics describe patterns across pupils and schools. They should be interpreted with appropriate context and should not be used to make assumptions about the circumstances of an individual pupil.