Two North East secondary schools have landed in the national top 20 for unauthorised absences, according to figures published by ChronicleLive, citing the Department for Education. The data covers the autumn and spring terms of 2025/26 and reveals just how wide the gap has become between schools across England on school truancy rates.
Studio West in Newcastle upon Tyne recorded an unauthorised absence rate of 10.6% across those two terms, placing it 13th in the national rankings. Washington Academy in Sunderland came in at 10.4%, putting it 15th. Both sit well above the national average for state-funded secondary schools, which stood at approximately 2.9% of sessions across the same period.
The national picture
In total, around 11.7 million school days were missed without authorisation across state-funded secondary schools in England during autumn and spring 2025/26. Of those, approximately 9.3 million days were attributed to unspecified “other” reasons, which can include family events, shopping trips, car trouble, and pupils skipping school without parental knowledge. A further 1.1 million days were lost to term-time holidays and lateness.
The Department for Education figures show the 2.9% unauthorised absence rate has edged down slightly over two years, but remains roughly twice the pre-pandemic level. The highest rate in the country was recorded at Co-op Academy Leeds, at 14.4%, nearly five times the national average. At the other end, Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary School in Lambeth reported an unauthorised absence rate of just 0.03%, the lowest of any school in England.
Deprivation drives the gap
The data points to a strong relationship between economic deprivation and higher unauthorised absence. Nationally, secondary school pupils eligible for free school meals missed unauthorised sessions at a rate of 6.0% across the two terms, more than three times the 1.7% rate recorded for pupils not eligible for the scheme.
The Department for Education’s report identified unauthorised secondary school absences as having a far greater impact on GCSE results than authorised time off, and noted that absences have risen sharply since the pandemic. The wider pattern, according to the figures, is that these absences are widening the disadvantage gap in academic achievement.
The Department for Education’s full school-by-school data is publicly available, allowing parents and guardians to check where their child’s school sits in the national rankings.