Term-time holidays: Where most children were absent
This article states that term time holidays ‘accounted for a quarter of unauthorised absences from schools in England, analysis of official figures shows.’ This is not true. Looking at the figures from the ‘National Statistics – Pupil absence in schools in England: 2015 to 2016’, it is shown that the percentage of unauthorised absences due to un-agreed family holidays in the year of 2015/16 was 0.5%, making it a fifth not a quarter.
The article then goes onto state that, ‘Torbay, Bournemouth, Poole, Cornwall and Devon are among the 10 areas with the highest percentage rise in holiday absence’. This information was correct. I checked this using the figures given by the department of education.
Further the article claims that, ‘term-time holidays accounted for an average of 27% of all missed “sessions” of school’, when this figure was far lower with family holidays only accounting for 8.2% of absences in 2015/16. I assessed this by comparing the data from the department of education.
The article highlights that, ‘the Department for Education insisted overall absence remained at “historic lows” and that persistent absence had fallen by more than a third since 2010-11’, though this is incorrect, as the overall absence rate has remained consistent at 4.6% and therefore there have not been historic lows
The link to this article is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39380529