Activity: Public Engagement and Outreach › Public Events
Description
Today’s young people have spent considerably less time in school than in previous years. Following school closures for periods during the pandemic, illness and self-isolation led to further absence, and in 2022/23 more than one in five pupils were still persistently absent.
Understanding in detail how patterns of absence affect the development of skills, education attainment and employment is vital for designing effective education recovery interventions, improving school attendance and enabling an inclusive school environment.
At the end of an academic year that has seen then expansion of numerous initiatives from data dashboards to attendance hubs and debate about the home-school contract, the Nuffield Foundation convened researchers, policy makers and sector leaders to examine new evidence on how missed school is affecting young people, the implications for social mobility and the solutions that are most likely to be effective.