This report - titled Every Day Counts: Understanding, Preventing and Responding to School Attendance Problems - was conducted as part of the Education for Inclusive Societies project under the programme of work of OECD’s Education Policy Committee. Across countries, there is growing recognition of the importance of ensuring that all learners can participate fully in education and benefit from supportive learning environments. However, data show that not all students attend school regularly and that school attendance problems (SAP) have become a challenge affecting classrooms in nearly every country.
SAP encompass a range of difficulties or patterns of behaviour that hinder a student's regular participation in education. They can stem from a complex interplay of individual, family, school, community and structural factors. Importantly, they are associated with important consequences for students, including lower academic achievement, reduced well-being, disengagement from learning and increased risk of early leaving from education and training. SAP can also have broder social and economic implications for education systems and societies. Post-Covid, growing concerns emerged across countries that some learners were struggling to re-engage with school attendance, further increasing attention to the need for effective prevention and response strategies.
To acquire a better understanding and develop policy responses to respond to SAP, the purpose of the report is to define the different forms of SAP, analyse recent trends using internationally comparable data complemented by national data sources, examine key drivers of SAP, explore both the academic and non‑academic consequences of SAP, review policies and practices across education systems, and develop policy pointers to help address these challenges. The report also presents the results of the OECD Policy Survey on School Attendance Problems.
The authors of this report are Lucie Cerna (co-ordinator), Samo Varsik, Cecilia Mezzanotte, Julie Pereira and Camilla Stronati of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills. The development of the report was guided by Andreas Schleicher and Paulo Santiago and was overseen by the Education Policy Committee. Valuable comments on draft chapters were provided by Paulo Santiago and members of the Education Policy Committee. Daiana Torres Lima was responsible for the production and layout of the report. Alexander Schnapka and Élisabeth Prégent-Bastien provided research support, and Eda Cabbar publication support. Many thanks also to Yuri Belfali and colleagues in the PISA team (especially Miyako Ikeda, Tue Halgreen and Francesco Avvisati) for their help. The authors are grateful to Dr. David Heyne (Excellence in Attendance Support) and Prof. Markus Klein (University of Strathclyde), two international experts who prepared substantial background notes on the drivers and consequences of SAP, respectively, which informed the report, and who also provided detailed comments on draft chapters and the policy survey.
The work was funded by the European Union and was conducted with the support of the Directorate‑General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC) of the European Commission. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of the OECD member countries or the European Union. The OECD team is indebted to Stefaan Hermans, Director, DG EAC, for supporting analysis on SAP and the development of this project. For their guidance and substantive comments, the OECD team would like to thank current and former colleagues at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture, Unit A.3 – Evidence-Based Policy and Evaluation under the leadership of Kyriacos Kyriacou and Philippe Cattoir and project co-ordinators Veronica De Nisi, and Joana Elisa Maldonado. A number of colleagues across DG EAC provided their time to review and comment on the report. Thank you to Annalisa Cannoni, Inês de Castro Correia, Sébastien Combeaud, Letizia Gambi, Marina Gršković, Ana-Carina Schmidt, Emily Sheehy and Stan Van Alphen. The OECD team would also like to thank national experts who completed the OECD Policy Survey on School Attendance Problems, which fed into this report, and provided comments on the chapters.
This report is organised into five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the topic of SAP, with information on key concepts and terminology and major attendance trends across education systems. Chapter 2 analyses the drivers of SAP, while Chapter 3 examines the consequences of attendance problems. Chapter 4 reviews policies and practices to support school attendance. Finally, Chapter 5 offers key messages, proposes policy pointers and suggests avenues for future research.