Attendance: 8% of schools not ‘fully open’ last week, says DfE

Around 92 per cent of state-funded schools were “fully open” as of last Thursday, the Department for Education has said.

Analysis of attendance figures by the DfE shows that although almost all state schools (99.1 per cent) were open on September 10, around 8 per cent were not “fully open” – meaning they did not provide face-to-face teaching for all pupils on roll for the whole school day.

However, the DfE claims that responses from schools “indicate that, for most schools that reported they were not fully open, this was due to non-COVID-19 related reasons”. Of all responding schools, 1 per cent said they were not fully open “due to suspected or confirmed cases of Covid-19”.

The department’s analysis also claims that around 88 per cent of pupils on roll in state-funded schools attended last Thursday.

The data is based on a weekly survey of schools across England. The response rate was 73 per cent last Thursday, but the DfE adjusted the data to allow for non-responses.