In summary:
New NFER (National Foundation for Educational Research) research shows persistent absence in England’s secondary schools is being driven by poor pupil wellbeing, not a lack of enforcement. Families say the thing that actually helps is supportive relationships and communication, not any single intervention. The pupils behind these figures didn’t start struggling at 13, which means the real opportunity is building confidence, belonging and emotional skills in primary school, well before attendance becomes a crisis.
Persistent absence is a wellbeing problem. That changes how schools solve it.
Many school leaders report the same thing about attendance: the pupils they worry about most aren’t the ones taking the odd Friday off. They’re the ones who’ve quietly stopped coming, and no letter home seems to reach them.
New research suggests those leaders are right to see it differently. In July 2026, NFER published interim findings from the National Absence and Bullying Study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, drawing on case studies in ten mainstream secondary schools and a survey of parents and carers. The findings put numbers on what many leaders already sense. Persistent absence in England’s secondary schools nearly doubled after the pandemic, from 13.7% in 2018/19 to 27.7% in 2021/22, and it hasn’t recovered: 23.4% of secondary pupils were still persistently absent in 2024/25.
The more useful finding is why. Just over half of the parents and carers surveyed (51%) named poor wellbeing as a key reason their child struggles to attend. Two-thirds linked declining wellbeing to social media, and around a third pointed to bullying or to the difficulty of accessing support services. As NFER’s Dr Emma Moore put it, “Improving attendance is not simply about getting pupils through the school gates.”
The finding worth acting on
Buried in the study is the result that should shape every attendance strategy: when families were asked what actually helped, they consistently identified supportive relationships and communication as more beneficial than any specific intervention.
That will ring true in most staffrooms. Most school leaders will have seen it themselves: the Year 7 pupil whose attendance recovers not because of a panel meeting, but because one form tutor greets her by name every morning and notices when the stomach aches start creeping back on Sunday nights. Relationships aren’t the soft edge of attendance work. On this evidence, they’re the mechanism.
The research also describes a loop leaders will recognise: poor wellbeing makes it harder to attend, and prolonged absence makes it harder to reconnect. Every week a child is out, the gap between them and school grows. Which makes the most important question an upstream one: how do you stop children entering the loop at all?
The part of the story that starts in primary
This is a secondary school study, and it’s worth being honest about that. But the pupils in it didn’t arrive at their struggles in Year 9. Confidence, self-esteem, emotional regulation and a sense of belonging are built through the primary years, long before the transition that so often tips vulnerable children into avoidance.
That’s the case for treating attendance as a whole-school wellbeing outcome from Reception onwards: teaching children how their brains work, how to manage worry, and how to build friendships, as everyday habits rather than a response to crisis. And attendance is never only about attendance. A child who isn’t in the room can’t learn what’s taught there, so every week of lost school compounds into lost learning. Close the attendance gap in primary and it closes an attainment gap before it opens.
What the independent data shows
The evidence for starting upstream now includes independent local data. In Bury, an analysis of attendance data provided by Bury Local Authority tracked 64 primary schools across four academic years (2021/22 to 2024/25), comparing 38 schools delivering myHappymind with 26 that weren’t (Bury Attendance and Persistent Absence Analysis, May 2026). In schools where 20% or more of pupils have SEN, persistent absence fell by 2.44 percentage points against 0.33 in comparison schools: 7.5 times the rate of improvement. In the most deprived schools the rate of improvement was 3.5 times higher. Those myHappymind schools started from tougher baselines and improved anyway, with attendance rising 0.61 percentage points while comparison schools declined.
Portsmouth adds a story about inequality. In the city’s analysis of primary school outcomes up to 2024/25, the schools using myHappymind served visibly more challenged cohorts: their suspension rate was 98% higher than other schools in 2022/23. By 2024/25 that gap had narrowed to 9%, and the gap in severe persistent absence had fallen from 50% to 20%. Suspensions rose across Portsmouth in those three years; in myHappymind schools they rose at a fraction of the citywide rate. The whole-school approach behind these results was evaluated by the Centre for Mental Health in Supporting a Whole-School Approach to Wellbeing (May 2026).
What school leaders can do now
Three practical starting points from the research:
First, treat persistent absence data as wellbeing data. Behind most entrenched non-attendance is a child who doesn’t feel safe, confident or connected, and the response that works looks less like enforcement and more like early help.
Second, audit relationships, not just interventions. The families in this study didn’t credit programmes; they credited people. Every child at risk of disconnection needs one adult in school who knows them, greets them and notices changes early.
Third, start upstream. If an attendance strategy begins at the point a child crosses the persistent absence threshold, it begins too late. The habits that protect attendance at 14 are built at 4, 7 and 10.
The absence crisis is one of the hardest problems schools are carrying. But this research points somewhere hopeful: the things that work, relationships, belonging and everyday wellbeing habits, are things primary schools are already brilliant at when they’re given the tools and the time. Schools with attendance, wellbeing or EBSA on the improvement plan this year can get support to make the most of what the evidence says works.
Sources: NFER press release, 23 July 2026 · National Absence and Bullying Study, interim report (PDF) · Bury Attendance and Persistent Absence Analysis 2021–25 (May 2026) · Portsmouth Primary School Outcomes up to 2024/25 · myhappymind.org
Frequently asked questions
New NFER research (July 2026) found that poor pupil wellbeing is a key driver of persistent absence in secondary schools. 51% of parents and carers surveyed named poor wellbeing as a key reason their child struggles to attend, alongside factors like social media use and bullying.
According to the research, families consistently identified supportive relationships and communication as more beneficial than any single intervention. It’s not one programme or policy that makes the difference, it’s a child having an adult at school who knows them and notices when something changes.
The confidence, self-esteem and emotional regulation skills that protect attendance are built year by year through the primary years. By the time a child reaches Year 9 and stops attending, schools are often responding to a problem that’s been building for years.
Yes. Independent local authority data from Bury tracked 64 primary schools over four academic years (2021/22 to 2024/25) and found that schools teaching wellbeing skills through myHappymind cut persistent absence at up to 7.5 times the rate of schools that weren’t, with the biggest gains in schools with higher numbers of pupils with SEN or in more deprived areas.
The National Absence and Bullying Study is funded by the Nuffield Foundation and draws on case studies in ten mainstream secondary schools alongside a survey of parents and carers. Interim findings were published in July 2026.
The research points to three starting points: treat attendance data as wellbeing data rather than a compliance issue, focus on relationships (not just interventions), and start prevention early rather than waiting until a child crosses the persistent absence threshold.
