This chapter provides seven key messages emerging from the report and offers 29 policy pointers on school attendance problems. These can be grouped under the following broad points: address the underlying drivers of absence through supportive and integrated responses; develop strong relations and engagement in schools; build strong partnerships with families and students; start early and respond timely before absence becomes entrenched; use enforcement carefully within a broader legislative framework that focuses on a proactive approach to supporting attendance; strengthen system and school capacity to act on attendance; and improve evaluation and shared learning on attendance across the education system. The chapter also discusses a number of research gaps and future avenues for research.
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5. Key messages, policy pointers and future research
Copy link to 5. Key messages, policy pointers and future researchAbstract
Key messages
Copy link to Key messagesBased on the evidence presented in the previous chapters, the report on school attendance problems proposes seven key messages with main policy pointers.
Absence is shaped by multiple, interrelated and self-reinforcing drivers
Understanding the drivers of school attendance problems is essential for effective responses, but these problems arise from a complex interplay of individual, family, school and broader factors, often linked to cumulative disadvantage. These factors influence each other in two-way relationships, for example absence can both result from and contribute to difficulties at home or school. Since causes and effects are closely connected and change over time, they are hard to separate, making these problems difficult to define and address, and leaving limited agreement on the best response. Therefore, it is important to respond to the underlying drivers of absence through multifaceted, supportive and integrated responses.
Positive students’ experiences in school are central to their attendance
Growing evidence points towards the importance of students’ experiences within schools as key factors that can affect their attendance. This concerns elements such as the school’s climate, the relationships with peers and staff, supportive and flexible learning environments and engagement with the learning experiences. Hence, it is crucial to develop strong relations and engagement in schools.
Parental beliefs and information gaps are changing and shaping absence
Parents are not always aware of the consequences and the cumulative amount of school their child has missed. Parental attitudes towards compulsory schooling have shifted after the COVID-19 pandemic, jeopardising alignment between families and schools. At the same time, parental support remains important for reducing risks linked to school attendance problems. Hence, it is essential to build strong partnerships and a shared understanding and involvement with families and students.
Absence matters at every stage: early, cumulative and persistent effects
School attendance problems have cumulative and lasting effects, with early absence strongly predicting later absence if not addressed. Absences in primary education can also hinder the development of foundation skills and are associated with poorer educational outcomes, including in later schooling. Starting early and responding effectively before absence becomes entrenched is thus key.
Legislative frameworks shape attendance, but punitive approaches have limited impact
Legal frameworks on school attendance promote access to education and define responsibilities of families, schools and public authorities but vary widely across education systems. Many rely on punitive measures, which may bring short-term improvements but have inconsistent and fading effects. Therefore, using enforcement carefully within a broader support framework is important.
Strong system capacity is essential to effectively monitor and respond to school absence
Strong system and school capacity is essential for monitoring and responding to attendance problems. This requires not only robust data systems and clear accountability, but also the capacity to act on information quickly and in a coordinated way. Schools play a key role, and their effectiveness depends on staff skills, resources and supportive organisational conditions. Strengthening system and school capacity to act on attendance is thus crucial.
Evaluation of policies and practices targeting absence is limited
The evidence on school attendance problems is uneven. Even though absence rates are widely collected, differences in definitions and reporting limit comparability across schools, regions and countries, making it difficult to assess trends or evaluate policy impacts consistently. In addition, evidence on effective interventions remains limited. Therefore, improving evaluation and learning on attendance across the system is important.
Introduction
Copy link to IntroductionThis chapter synthesises the main findings on school attendance problems (SAP) from the report and translates them into forward-looking policy pointers. It identifies seven key messages that capture the overarching patterns observed across education systems from the data analyses, OECD Policy Survey (2025[1]) results and findings from the literature review, highlighting both shared challenges and important differences in how SAP are understood, measured and addressed.
The chapter also outlines 29 policy pointers aimed at supporting more effective and coherent responses to SAP. These pointers are not intended as prescriptive recommendations, but rather as strategic orientations that can inform policy design and implementation across diverse contexts. They emphasise the need for balanced approaches that combine prevention, timely intervention and targeted support, while recognising the role of schools, families and wider systems. Equity should also remain a constant consideration across these policy pointers: students facing disadvantage and structural barriers are disproportionately exposed to SAP and may require differentiated and targeted forms of support.
Finally, the chapter identifies several research gaps and avenues for future investigation. Despite growing attention to SAP, important questions remain in regard to the drivers, measurement and long-term consequences, as well as the effectiveness of different policy responses. Addressing these gaps will be important for strengthening the evidence base and supporting more informed decision making in the coming years.
Key messages and policy pointers
Copy link to Key messages and policy pointersThe following sections present key messages emerging from the report’s findings, followed by policy pointers.
Absence is shaped by multiple, interrelated and self-reinforcing drivers
Understanding the drivers of SAP is critical for designing effective responses. Absence can arise from many potential causes – up to 781 risk factors of SAP identified in one review – and is typically embedded in a web of personal and social problems (Gubbels, van der Put and Assink, 2019[2]). In this context, poverty and socio-economic circumstances may deserve greater consideration among the individual and family-level drivers of absence. Indeed, SAP can stem from a complex interplay of individual, family, school, community and structural factors, which suggests that absence may both reflect and reinforce cumulative disadvantage (Chapter 2).
SAP are also characterised by self-reinforcing dynamics (Chapter 3). Absence both results from and contributes to academic difficulties, socio-emotional challenges and disengagement. For example, early learning difficulties can increase frustration and reduce school engagement, leading to absence. In turn, absence exacerbates learning gaps and weakens motivation, reinforcing academic vulnerability. Similarly, anxiety or depression may contribute to non-attendance, while prolonged absence can intensify social isolation and emotional distress.
These cross-domain effects and feedback loops make SAP difficult to define and address. SAP (chronic absence, more specifically) have been described as a “wicked problem” (Childs and Lofton, 2021[3]). They are difficult to define and address, as their causes and effects are complex, interdependent and hard to disentangle (Crowley and Head, 2017[4]; Weber and Khademian, 2008[5]). These messages imply the need to address the underlying drivers of absence through supportive and integrated responses. This could be achieved through the following approaches:
Respond to health barriers to improve attendance
Physical and mental health strongly shape students’ ability to attend school. Illness, fatigue, sleep and nutrition affect daily engagement, while chronic conditions and unmet health needs increase the risk of persistent absence and compound disadvantage. PISA evidence shows that sickness is the most commonly cited reason for absence across OECD and EU countries.
Mental health challenges, particularly anxiety and depression, are consistently linked to school avoidance and ongoing non-attendance, often interacting with school-related stressors. Schools play a key role in providing or connecting students with health and well-being supports, including counselling and school-based health services. The OECD Policy Survey data indicate that most education systems require or encourage schools to provide health-related and psychological supports, highlighting their central role in addressing attendance barriers. While evidence on general mental health interventions on school attendance is mixed, targeted, attendance-focused interventions on psychosocial support show more consistent benefits.
Preventive health measures, such as hygiene practices and immunisation, demonstrate relatively strong evidence in reducing illness-related absence. Overall, integrating accessible health supports with attendance strategies is critical to addressing underlying barriers and improving participation.
Address structural barriers through co-ordinated and school-based supports
SAP are often rooted in structural barriers that extend beyond the school environment, including transport constraints, food insecurity, housing instability, limited access to healthcare, and broader family circumstances such as parental health and family functioning (Chapter 2). Addressing these barriers requires an approach that combines co-ordinated, cross-sector support, sufficient coverage and capacity, and targeted measures delivered within schools. Since these structural barriers are unequally distributed, effective responses may also require targeted allocation of resources and supports towards the students, schools and communities facing the highest levels of disadvantage and SAP. At the system level, effective responses depend on strong co-ordination between education, health and social services to ensure that students and families can access appropriate supports in a timely and coherent way, with sufficient coverage and capacity across services to ensure accessibility and responsiveness. Such approaches include facilitating referrals, integrating physical and mental health services into attendance strategies and enabling schools to connect families with external services that address underlying needs.
At the same time, schools play a critical role in mitigating the impact of these barriers through targeted, school-based supports. These can include providing access to school meals, offering flexible arrangements (such as flexible timetables or alternative delivery modes including online or blended learning), and flexible assessments where appropriate, and ensuring that students experiencing disadvantage receive timely academic support. Evidence suggests that in particular school meal provision can have a positive effect on attendance (Chapter 4). For instance, in countries such as Lithuania, England (United Kingdom) and Thailand, socio-economically disadvantaged students are entitled to free breakfast, lunch and, in some cases, school supplies. Importantly, recognising and addressing structural barriers helps shift the framing of SAP away from individual or parental responsibility alone, and towards a more holistic understanding of the conditions that shape participation. This approach may also strengthen trust between schools and families and support more sustainable improvements in attendance.
Provide a legal basis for co-ordinated support services
Attendance problems often require responses that go beyond the education sector. Legislative frameworks can facilitate collaboration by enabling information-sharing (within appropriate safeguards), and by establishing dedicated structures for co-operation and joint action between schools, social services, health providers and regional authorities. Providing a clear legal basis for such co-ordination can help ensure that students and families facing barriers to attendance can access timely and appropriate support, and that responsibilities across services are aligned. It can also strengthen accountability, clarify roles and referral pathways and support more consistent implementation of multi-agency responses across regions and local contexts. Clear communication, transparency and a supportive, respectful approach are also important to maintain trust and engagement with families in the context of multi-agency work.
Share data responsibly across institutions
Collaborative data-sharing across institutions can support more integrated responses to attendance issues, provided it is secure, lawful and used in ways that benefit students. Linking absence and attendance data with information from health, social services or other areas can enable more targeted support, while appropriate safeguards are essential to prevent stigma and protect families. Strengthening data infrastructure through the linked administrative datasets and longitudinal data infrastructures could further enhance data analysis and inform policy making. Several systems, such as England (United Kingdom) and New Zealand, have developed such integrated data systems, offering promising examples for further exploration.
Create collective responsibility
A coherent response to SAP requires a shared commitment across all levels of the education system and beyond. This involves defining clear expectations and responsibilities at central, regional and school levels, while ensuring alignment between policy and practice. Embedding attendance as a shared priority within school communities, including among staff, students and families, can help foster a culture that values regular participation and supports those at risk. Framing attendance as a collective responsibility, rather than solely an individual obligation, can also encourage more supportive and co-ordinated approaches to intervention.
Positive students’ experiences in school are central to their attendance and engagement
Within a broader set of drivers of absence, school-related factors play a particularly important role. Growing evidence points towards the importance of students’ experiences within schools as key factors that can affect their attendance. This concerns elements such as the school’s climate, the relationships with peers and staff, supportive and flexible learning environments and the engagement with the learning experiences, which all play a key role in whether students feel motivated and willing to attend regularly (Chapter 2).
In particular, negative school climate and a lack of school belonging are associated with higher levels of absence (Chapter 2). Students also frequently report avoiding school because they feel unsafe or experience discrimination. Health-related issues, including physical and mental health challenges, also contribute to SAP by influencing students’ day-to-day experiences at school, including attendance, engagement and well-being.
These messages imply the need to develop strong supportive relations and engagement in schools. This could be achieved through the following approaches:
Create a positive and safe school climate and a strong sense of belonging
Fostering key aspects of school climate, including student connectedness with school and with peers, and engagement in school activities may be important in driving attendance. Students’ perceptions of safety are also an important precondition for regular attendance. Experiences of bullying, for instance, can significantly undermine students’ willingness to attend school (Chapter 2). Almost all (41) of 45 education systems require or encourage schools to implement initiatives to improve school climate (Chapter 4). Spain, for example, has developed a comprehensive, system-level approach to strengthening school climate, coexistence and student well-being, embedded in both legislation and targeted programmes. National education law in Spain establishes well-being, inclusion and positive coexistence as core principles of the education system, explicitly promoting values such as respect, non-violence, social cohesion and prevention of bullying and discrimination.
Policies to improve school climate could prioritise building strong relationships, enhancing students’ sense of belonging, and fostering safe, inclusive and engaging school environments. Evidence indicates that these factors can contribute to improved attendance, especially by reducing authorised absences, though their impact is generally moderate and mediated through students’ perceptions and experiences.
Build positive adult-student and student-student relationships
The lack of strong, trusting relationships with adults and peers are an important driver of absence. Evidence, while limited, indicates that positive student-teacher relationships are associated with lower likelihood of SAP (Chapter 2). Peer relationships also play an important role, and initiatives that foster positive peer interaction and inclusion can deter absence (Chapter 2). Recognising relational capacity as a core lever for attendance implies investing in the time, skills and organisational conditions that allow staff and students to build and sustain these relationships. Across surveyed education systems, 13 out of 45 systems encourage or require schools to implement peer-support programmes (Chapter 4).
Use academic approaches and targeted support to help students catch up after absence and to strengthen their connection to learning
Instructional adaptation can include more intensive or remedial instruction after a period of absence. Indeed, 22 education systems require or encourage schools to provide remedial instruction to students returning after absence in order to help them catch up academically and re-engage with learning.
Academic approaches can also contribute to improving attendance more broadly when they strengthen students’ sense of connection to learning and school, rather than focusing solely on narrow skill acquisition. While effects are generally modest and variable, stronger impacts are observed in approaches that promote engagement through authentic and student-centred learning, or that are implemented as coherent, longer-term or whole-school strategies. Targeted academic supports, such as high-impact tutoring, can also help reduce SAP, while more personalised and relational approaches (e.g. project-based learning) show promising, though sometimes time-limited, effects. At the same time, the effectiveness of these approaches depends on schools having the resources and capacity to provide inclusive education and respond to the diverse needs of students, whereas short-term or narrowly targeted interventions tend to be less effective.
Shift attendance policies towards support and engagement, limiting exclusion to a last resort
In some instances, education systems enforce absences on students (“suspensions”) as a punishment measure or as a protective/administrative action. Indeed, 36 of 45 educations systems have a policy enforcing absences on students (Chapter 4). However, the evidence indicates that suspensions are associated with various negative outcomes, such as increased absence, higher delinquency, decreased academic achievement, lower university attendance and lower sense of belonging (Chapter 4). Therefore, it is important that such exclusionary practices are only used as a last resort and within a broader, supportive framework.
When exclusion is avoided, schools require effective alternatives to maintain a safe and supportive learning environment for all students, including those affected by disruptive behaviours. Evidence points to the value of in-school approaches such as restorative practices, behavioural support, and targeted interventions that address underlying needs while protecting classroom climate. In cases where temporary exclusion is deemed necessary, it needs to be time-limited and embedded within a comprehensive response that maintains student engagement, for example through structured learning activities, collaboration with external providers (e.g. non-governmental organisations, community or youth organisations), and continued access to support services.
Importantly, reintegration planning needs to be prioritised from the outset, with clear pathways to support students’ return to school, rebuild relationships and prevent recurrence. As mentioned before, strong co-ordination with social, health and community services can help ensure continuity of support and reduce the risk of long-term disengagement.
Develop relevant, inclusive and flexible learning environments
Students are more likely to attend when instruction is career-relevant, i.e. when teachers illustrate the value of the content they teach through examples drawn from the labour market (Orthner et al., 2013[6]). Active pedagogical approaches, such as problem-based learning, peer instruction, flipped classrooms, collaborative learning, and game-based learning, can increase student engagement and academic performance (Sahito, Khoso and Phulpoto, 2025[7]). This highlights the importance of curricula and teaching approaches that are practical, inclusive and connected to students’ experiences. Viewing engagement as a core lever for attendance, rather than only academic attainment, can help reframe attendance policies from compliance towards participation and motivation. Around half to two thirds of 45 education systems have curriculum strategies in place that aim to make education more engaging or relevant for students (Chapter 4). Examples include the 25% curriculum autonomy in Portuguese schools since 2018, or the expansion of vocational and work-based pathways in Türkiye (Chapter 4).
Greater flexibility in how learning is organised can also support attendance for students facing health, caregiving or other barriers. Flexible timetables, blended learning or temporary part-time arrangements may help students remain connected to education while addressing individual circumstances. For example, schools in Scotland and England (United Kingdom) may use temporary part-time timetables for students unable to attend full-time due to medical, behavioural or reintegration needs, although evidence on long-term impacts remains limited. Furthermore, in 2024–2025, eleven European education systems reported offering such forms of flexible scheduling (European Commission, 2025[8]).
Expand access to extracurricular activities
Beyond curriculum strategies, 28 of 45 education systems reported requiring or encouraging student engagement strategies. A common strategy to this end is to offer extracurricular activities. Extracurricular provision may support attendance particularly when it strengthens students’ connection to school, builds relationships with adults and peers, and addresses broader socio-emotional or contextual barriers faced by disadvantaged students (Chapter 4). For example, in the Netherlands, the School en Omgeving (School and Environment) programme offers an enriched school day to students who, due to their home situation or the place where they live, have less access to activities, such as sports, culture and additional academic support.
Parental beliefs and information gaps are changing and shaping absence
Parents are often unaware of the numerous consequences of missing school (Gottfried and Hutt, 2019[9]) and may underestimate the cumulative impact of absence (Rogers and Feller, 2018[10]). Furthermore, there are indications that some parents altered their attitudes towards (compulsory) schooling after the COVID-19 pandemic (Chapter 2). Parental tolerance for non-essential term-time absence (such as for holidays, events unrelated to school) seems to have increased in several education systems. Moreover, expectations for attending school while experiencing a minor illness seem to have also softened across countries and parents seem to be more likely, in some instances, to keep their children at home. These health-related shifts, combined with work-related (home-office) shifts, can interact to normalise short, discretionary absences. This can then have an impact on how families and schools align expectations about everyday attendance.
At the same time, parental support plays an important protective role towards risk factors associated with SAP. Indeed, stronger school-home relationships have the potential to improve attendance patterns, while breakdowns in school-home relationships can also precipitate absence.
These messages imply the need to build strong partnerships with families and students. This could be achieved through the following approaches:
Rebuild shared norms post-pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted established expectations around school attendance in many contexts. Rebuilding shared norms among students, families and schools around the importance of regular attendance is hence a key priority. This involves promoting attendance positively, as part of a supportive and engaging school experience, rather than relying primarily on deterrence or sanctions. Clear, consistent messaging across the system can help re-establish attendance as a collective expectation. In England (United Kingdom), the government has emphasised the need to connect system-level reforms with the everyday practices of schools, which are expected to embed a whole-school culture of high attendance and ensure that attendance work is everyone’s responsibility. The statutory guidance requires every school to have a written attendance policy that is understood by leaders, staff, students and parents, setting out expectations for punctuality, communication procedures and internal responsibilities, among others.
Include the voices of parents and students in the design and implementation of legislation, policies and practices
Strengthening partnerships also requires actively involving families and students in the design and implementation of attendance legislation, policies and practices. Parents and students offer important perspectives on barriers such as transportation, caregiving responsibilities, school climate and mental health, as well as what motivates engagement. Creating structured opportunities for dialogue (e.g. through surveys, focus groups, parent councils and student advisory groups) can help ensure that these insights are not only heard but meaningfully reflected in decisions. This deeper understanding allows legislative frameworks and policies to be more responsive to lived experiences and local contexts. However, the OECD Policy Survey shows that 24 (out of 45 education systems) do not centrally collect student perspectives to inform policies or practices on SAP though they may collect them at school level. Those that do collect student perspectives usually do so through student surveys.
Importantly, this involvement should be ongoing rather than one-off. Engaging families and students in co-designing solutions, reviewing attendance data and refining approaches over time fosters a sense of shared ownership. When stakeholders see their input lead to visible changes, it builds trust, strengthens the legitimacy of policies and increases their uptake. Moving towards these participatory approaches reinforces the idea of attendance as a shared responsibility, positioning families and students as active partners rather than passive recipients. In turn, attendance efforts become more relational, context-sensitive and sustainable, grounded in collaboration rather than compliance. For example, New South Wales (Australia) provides examples of strategies to include student voice on attendance, including co-developing attendance improvement plans, conducting school surveys, helping analyse attendance data and organising classroom debates (New South Wales Government, 2026[11]).
Use personalised and actionable communication
Research suggests that many parents systematically underestimate their child’s absences, while individualised attendance summaries can help reduce SAP (Rogers and Feller, 2018[10]). Clear, timely and tailored communication is hence important to reinforce the importance of regular attendance and to correct misperceptions. Providing parents with regular, individualised updates on their child’s attendance can prompt more effective engagement. However, evidence indicates that information alone is sometimes insufficient (Chapter 4). More one-dimensional approaches, such as frequent absence notifications, have not consistently improved attendance (Balu, Porter and Gunton, 2016[12]; Rogers and Feller, 2018[10]; Bergman and Chan, 2021[13]). The most effective strategies combine clear information with practical guidance and supportive engagement, rather than relying on generic or purely punitive messaging. For example, in Wales (United Kingdom), government-funded Family Engagement Officers are specifically tasked with fostering positive and trusting home-school relationships. Similarly, in Ireland, Home School Community Liaison officers are responsible for strengthening relationships between schools, families and communities to improve student attendance, participation and retention, particularly among students at risk of educational disadvantage. Moreover, the use of modern communication tools can further improve reach, timeliness and responsiveness (Gottfried and Hutt, 2019[9]).
Absence matters at every stage: early, cumulative and persistent effects
SAP matter across all stages of education, with effects that are both cumulative and persistent over time. Prior absence is a strong predictor of subsequent absence, with SAP often persisting if not addressed. PISA evidence shows that children who are absent in primary education are more likely to experience absence in later stages (Chapter 2).
Moreover, absences in primary education (and emerging evidence showing the same for early childhood education and care) can disrupt the development of foundational cognitive, language and socio-emotional skills that underpin later learning and engagement. Evidence indicates that absences in early age are associated with poorer educational outcomes, including in later stages of schooling (Chapter 3).
Transitions between levels of education (such as the move from primary to lower secondary education) represent periods of heightened risk and can be particular harmful to later student achievement (Dräger, Klein and Sosu, 2025[14]). Changes in curricula, expectations and school environments can challenge students’ adjustment and the establishment of effective learning routines. Absences during these periods can make it more difficult for students to adapt to new expectations and establish effective learning routines (Chapter 2) and may therefore have particularly pronounced consequences and increase the risk of longer-term disengagement (Chapter 3).
Besides the need to address these drivers, improve student engagement and engage with parents (mentioned in earlier policy pointers), these messages also imply the need to start early and respond timely before absence becomes entrenched. This could be achieved through several approaches:
Engage in continuous monitoring of attendance or absence
Real-time monitoring of attendance, particularly if tracked at the student level, enables the construction of longitudinal attendance records that offer a dynamic view of students’ attendance. Such data infrastructures can facilitate the early identification of SAP, support the design of targeted interventions, and allow policymakers, schools and teachers to monitor trends. Beyond their operational value, these longitudinal data can also play a critical role in evaluation, enabling the assessment of attendance policies’ effectiveness and a better understanding of the trajectories that lead to chronic absence or, conversely, return to attendance. However, only 25 of 45 education systems track individual student’s attendance (Chapter 4).
At the same time, it is important to monitor attendance across the educational journey (though only 12 of 45 education systems track attendance from ECEC to upper secondary education (including vocational)) and also during transition points. Doing so enables the observation of cumulative days missed and short-term fluctuations, as these can reveal different types of risk. For example, intermittent absences may indicate emerging disengagement or instability, even if overall attendance remains above formal thresholds (Chapter 4). These might be particularly consequential during transition points between educational levels, when the risks of absence are sometimes higher.
Strengthen support at key transition points
Transitions between education levels are critical periods of heightened attendance risk and require close monitoring and targeted support. Policies can mitigate these risks by strengthening peer support (e.g. buddy systems or peer-mentoring, for example in the United Kingdom) to foster belonging, alongside robust tracking and early warning systems to identify and respond to emerging attendance issues early. Partnership-based approaches that engage families and coordinate support across schools and community services can further ease transitions, particularly for students at greater risk of disengagement. For instance, the previously mentioned Home School Community Liaison Scheme in Ireland supports home visits, parent-focused activities and courses, and by facilitating communication between families and schools. The coordinators also work closely with school staff and community services to identify needs, support transitions across education stages and ensure that families are connected to relevant supports.
Enable timely and continuous intervention to address emerging absence patterns and underlying risks
A key function of legislative frameworks is to provide a basis for timely intervention that addresses both emerging absence patterns and the underlying risk factors associated with SAP. This involves enabling schools and relevant services to identify and respond early to issues such as mental health challenges, family circumstances, disengagement, bullying or socio-economic barriers before absences become entrenched. Legal provisions that support early identification, combined with clear guidance on appropriate responses, can help shift systems from reactive to preventive approaches, ensuring that support is provided at the right time and tailored to students’ needs.
Use timely and granular data
Effective intervention depends on access to timely, detailed and reliable data. Attendance or absence could be tracked daily, or as frequently as feasible, allowing schools and systems to respond quickly when issues arise. Beyond simple attendance rates, it is important to monitor both cumulative days missed and short-term fluctuations, as these can reveal different types of risk. Systems that make such data visible and actionable are better positioned to support early responses. Disaggregated attendance data can also help identify inequities in attendance patterns across student groups and support more targeted responses and resource allocation. It could be helpful to leverage digital tools to collect granular data and simplify the process. For example, Croatia has developed a public dashboard that brings together data on student achievement and attendance in primary and secondary education, enabling nuanced analysis of absence patterns across regions and by school characteristics. Another example comes from the Flemish Community of Belgium, where schools are required to record attendance twice daily and report it through a centralised student-level data system that links attendance to other student information, thereby supporting both individual follow-up and system-level analysis of absence patterns. However, it is important that teachers, school leaders or relevant non-teaching staff have the capacity to collect, analyse and respond to data (see also Strong system capacity is essential to effectively monitor and respond to school absence).
Reassess the role of thresholds and absence categories
Even small amounts of absences can have negative consequences on outcomes. As such, absence thresholds (e.g. 10% absence), while useful for clear communication in triggering interventions, might misdirect the efforts of policymakers and practitioners to reactive policies that are implemented too late. Moreover, evidence presented in Chapter 3 suggests that both authorised and unauthorised absences are negatively associated with student achievement. As such, using solely unauthorised absences as a trigger for intervention might be too late. Unauthorised absences can be viewed as the tip of the iceberg: serious unauthorised absences can follow a large number of authorised absences. Even authorised absences (such as those related to illness) can negatively affect learning and engagement, highlighting the importance of health-related interventions (see Respond to health barriers to improve attendance).
Legislative frameworks shape attendance, but punitive approaches have limited impact
Legal frameworks on school attendance play an important role in promoting access to education, protecting children’s rights and clarifying the responsibilities of families, schools and public authorities (Heyne, 2025[15]), but they vary considerably among education systems, as highlighted in Chapter 4. For example, in some education systems, students are required to meet minimum attendance thresholds to complete a grade, subject or level of education, whereas this is not the case in others.
Legislative frameworks can support early intervention by enabling timely and targeted response to absence, proactively preventing disengagement. However, many legislative frameworks around attendance rely on punitive measures to secure compliance with compulsory schooling requirements. Punitive responses to absence can include fines to parents, legal proceedings against parents, grade repetition, and notice to the police. Such measures are generally intended to enforce compulsory schooling laws, deter persistent non-attendance, and signal the seriousness of attendance obligations (Wright, 2009[16]; Zhang, 2007[17]). Indeed, many education systems use some form of punitive response, largely following unauthorised absences (Chapter 4).
While these sanctions can produce short-term improvements in attendance, particularly when absence is newly emerging and enforcement is swift and credible, the effects tend to vary across contexts and often diminish once the enforcement pressure eases. Particular caution is also needed to ensure that punitive measures do not disproportionately penalise students and families already facing structural disadvantage or limited access to support services (Chapter 4). These messages imply the need to use enforcement carefully within a broader support framework. This could be achieved through the following approaches:
Clearly define responsibilities for families, schools and authorities
Regular school attendance should be supported by collaborative frameworks including parents and learners’ representatives that specify the roles and responsibilities of families, schools and public authorities. This includes clarifying expectations for parental engagement, school-level monitoring and follow-up, and the responsibilities of central and regional authorities in oversight and support. Clearly defined responsibilities could help reduce ambiguity, promote consistency in responses to SAP and strengthen a shared vision in the system.
Reassess the role of punitive measures
In many education systems, school attendance is enforced through financial penalties or legal measures. Legal procedures are adopted in 27 of 45 systems and 17 impose fines (Chapter 4). While these approaches may signal the importance of attendance, their effectiveness in improving it is mixed and highly context-dependent. Policymakers should critically evaluate their effectiveness within their national contexts, rather than assuming they will act as reliable deterrents. Particular attention could be paid to the potential for fines and prosecutions to disproportionately affect disadvantaged families or to undermine trust between schools and parents. If used, it is important that these measures are carefully targeted, transparently applied and accompanied by appropriate safeguards.
If sanctions are employed, embed them within graduated frameworks
Where sanctions are part of the policy measures, they should be embedded within a graduated framework of responses that prioritises timely support and escalation only when necessary. This involves, for example, determining targeted graduated responses that increase in intensity according to the persistence of SAP, while remaining sensitive to students’ individual circumstances. Such frameworks should also monitor the potential unintended effects of punitive measures, including impacts on student well-being and equity as fines can impact lower income families to a greater extent. It is important that enforcement does not operate in isolation but is combined with tailored supports that address the underlying drivers of absence.
Multi-tiered approaches, particularly the more recent development of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), provide schools with a structured framework for delivering graduated levels of support (OECD, 2026[18]). MTSS is designed to ensure that all students receive appropriate levels of support through a continuum of increasingly intensive interventions, while promoting early identification and prevention. Applied to SAP, MTSS can help schools integrate supportive measures within a coherent farmwork, ensuring that responses escalate proportionately and only after less intensive interventions have been attempted.
Limit grade repetition as an attendance response
Grade repetition is used as a response to poor attendance in 14 of 45 educations systems (Chapter 4). However, evidence suggests that it may reinforce disengagement rather than resolve underlying issues and may disproportionately disadvantage vulnerable students. Students who repeat a grade may experience stigma, reduced motivation and weaker attachment to school, all of which can further exacerbate SAP. Overall, grade repetition is generally associated with lower educational completion, particularly when repetition occurs during the later grades. It is important that policies limit using grade repetition as a tool to address SAP and consider alternative strategies that focus on re-engagement and support, such as targeted academic support through tutoring, personalised learning pathways, mentoring, and coordinated interventions that address the underlying causes of absence.
Strong system capacity is essential to effectively monitor and respond to school absence
Strong system capacity is essential to effectively monitor and respond to SAP. This includes not only the availability of robust data systems and clear responsibility structures at the system level, but also the capacity to translate information into action, for example by enabling schools to identify at-risk students early, trigger timely follow-up and provide targeted support. This requires sufficient staffing, clear protocols and coordination across services. Without such capacity, even well-designed policies may not be effectively understood or implemented in practice.
Capacity at the school level is equally important. Schools are at the front line of identifying attendance issues and responding to them, and their ability to do so depends on the skills, resources and organisational conditions available to staff. In particular, the capacity of teachers and school personnel plays a central role in shaping student attendance (Chapter 4). By having a clear understanding of possible triggers and protective factors and adopting practices that build positive relationships with parents and students, they can prevent and address absence. However, they need appropriate capacity-building programmes to implement those.
Beyond teachers, the literature points to the broader capacity of non-teaching staff as a key component of effective responses to SAP. Attendance problems are often rooted in social, emotional or structural barriers that extend beyond the scope of instruction alone. Addressing these challenges requires the coordinated efforts of a wider set of professionals, including school leaders, counsellors, psychologists, social workers and administrative staff. Their ability to collaborate, share information and engage with families and external services is particularly important in supporting students at risk of persistent absence. However, it is also crucial that sufficient staff (both teachers and non-teaching staff) are available.
Finally, capacity to understand and analyse attendance data is a crucial enabler of effective response. Schools and systems need to be able to move from simple reporting to proactive use of data, ensuring that attendance information supports early intervention, continuous and timely follow-up and evaluation of responses. Therefore, strengthening these monitoring capacities is central to building more preventive, responsive and equitable approaches to SAP.
These messages imply the need to strengthen system and school capacity to monitor and act on attendance. This could be achieved through the following approaches:
Provide training on attendance to teachers and other school professionals
The capacity of teachers and school staff plays a critical role in shaping student attendance as teachers have measurable and meaningful effects on student attendance. However, across surveyed education systems, only 15 require school attendance to be included in initial teacher education and only 15 mandate continuing professional learning on addressing student absence for teachers. Some systems also extend these requirements to other staff, including school leaders (11 systems) and additional education personnel (8 systems) (Chapter 4).
Therefore, strengthening professional capacity is crucial not only for responding to SAP, but also for building a whole-school culture that promotes attendance, belonging and engagement. Offering specific training on attendance, including possible drivers for absences, protective factors and effective prevention and intervention approaches, in both initial teacher education and continuing professional learning can help teachers, school leaders and non-teaching staff to develop the knowledge and skills needed to support regular attendance. Such training could also encourage schools to adopt whole-school attendance strategies that embed attendance promotion into everyday school practices, student support systems and relationships with families and communities. Nonetheless, education systems also need to ensure that schools have sufficient staff and dedicated capacity to monitor attendance, engage with students and families and co-ordinate timely interventions, particularly in schools facing higher levels of SAP.
In addition, capacity building needs to strengthen data literacy and the effective use of early warning systems. Schools require support to analyse patterns of absence, identify early warning signs and design timely, appropriate responses. Training could hence cover the interpretation of attendance data, the use of monitoring tools and the actions required following early warning signals, including co-ordinated responses with families and external services where needed. Strengthening these skills across the school workforce can help schools move from reactive approaches to more preventive and strategic attendance practices.
For example, pre-service and newly appointed teachers in Korea receive training on the importance of school attendance as part of their preparation and induction, while schools provide mandatory annual training on attendance recording and reporting procedures. In Massachusetts (United States), the Early Warning Indicator System, introduced in 2011, uses existing student data to identify students at risk of not reaching key academic milestones, supporting earlier and more targeted interventions.
Engage with non-teaching staff, protect staff time and clarify roles
Systematically engaging with non-teaching staff such as social workers, psychologists and counsellors can provide targeted support to students with SAP. Ensuring that there is a sufficient number of appropriately qualified staff across these categories is essential to meet students’ needs effectively. In addition, as attendance work requires dedicated time and clear responsibilities, it could be helpful for schools to designate specific and adequately trained staff members, such as attendance leads or teams responsible for monitoring, analysing, outreach and responding to SAP. This helps ensure continuity, timeliness and co-ordination of efforts.
School staff involved in attendance work need the time and mandate to engage with students and families, coordinate with external services and implement targeted interventions. Protecting time for these activities is critical to their effectiveness and helps ensure that attendance responsibilities are carried out consistently and to a high standard.
Develop capacity in the system through external and internal school evaluations
External inspections and internal school evaluations can play an important role in strengthening capacity. Embedding attendance as a focus area within these processes can help signal its importance and encourage schools to reflect on their practices. For instance, in Greece, the national school self-evaluation framework requires schools’ Teaching Staff Councils to assess school performance across defined operational axes, including one explicitly dedicated to school dropout and attendance. Evaluations should be used not only for accountability, but also as tools for continuous improvement, supporting schools in identifying strengths, diagnosing challenges and refining their strategies. For example, in Norway, the Directorate of Education and Training provides schools with a structured tool to support self-assessment and improvement planning. This tool helps schools identify their strengths and challenges, set goals and monitor progress; and explicitly includes questions about school absences. At the system level, aggregated evaluation findings can inform broader policy development and capacity-building efforts.
Evaluation of policies and practices targeting absence is limited
The evidence base on SAP remains uneven (see also Research gaps and future research). While absence or attendance rates are widely collected, comparing them is more complex than it appears. Systems vary in how they define and record different forms of absence (e.g. authorised vs. unauthorised, lateness or chronic absenteeism). These differences limit comparability across education systems, making it difficult to assess trends or evaluate the external validity of policy impacts.
Furthermore, the evidence on which interventions work best remains limited. Reviews of attendance policies and practices in the literature find wide variation in strategies and relatively few rigorous evaluations, with many studies providing inconclusive or context-specific findings. Despite a growing policy attention to SAP, important gaps remain in the evidence base in regard to the effectiveness of different interventions and policy approaches (see Gaps in policy evaluation). Many commonly used measures, particularly punitive responses, have limited or mixed empirical support. Others, such as public awareness campaigns, lack evaluations altogether.
These messages imply the need to improve evaluation and learning on attendance across the education system. This could be achieved through the following approaches:
Prioritise rigorous evaluation
Policymakers, practitioners and researchers could place greater emphasis on generating robust evidence on what works to improve attendance. This includes testing in controlled or quasi-experimental settings before wider implementation. Strengthening causal research is particularly important for widely used measures whose effectiveness remains uncertain. Building partnerships between researchers, governments and schools can support the design and implementation of high-quality evaluations.
Pilot and evaluate before scaling
Considering the complexity and context-specific nature of SAP, it is important to test and refine interventions before they are scaled up. Rigorous piloting allows systems to assess effectiveness, identify unintended consequences and adapt interventions to local conditions. Particular attention could be paid to evaluating commonly used but weakly evidenced approaches, ensuring that resources are directed towards approaches that demonstrate impact. This iterative approach can help reduce reliance on assumptions or tradition and support more evidence-informed policy making.
Facilitate peer learning
Strengthening the evidence base also involves improving how knowledge is shared across schools, regions and countries. Systems could create mechanisms for peer learning that enable practitioners and policymakers to exchange implementation experiences, challenges and lessons learned. Importantly, this could go beyond comparing outcomes alone and include analysis of policy design features, implementation processes and contextual factors. Such exchanges can help identify transferable practices while recognising the importance of local adaptation.
Research gaps and future research
Copy link to Research gaps and future researchThis report has aimed to provide a broad overview of international data analyses, relevant literature and policy responses related to SAP. However, despite the growing interest and increased research in the field, several important research gaps remain. The main gaps encountered are summarised below, together with suggestions for future research.
Conceptual fragmentation and definitional inconsistency
Despite extensive research, the field of SAP remains conceptually fragmented. Terms such as “truancy”, “school refusal”, and “chronic absenteeism” are often used inconsistently across countries and studies, reflecting differing legal, cultural and institutional interpretations of absence.
This lack of definitional coherence limits the comparability of international data and constrains the development of cumulative knowledge. It also complicates the design of targeted policy responses, as different forms of absence may require different interventions.
Future work could prioritise integrated conceptual frameworks that position SAP along a continuum, enabling more consistent cross-national measurement and stronger alignment between research and policy.
Limited geographic coverage
Despite growing international attention to SAP, the evidence base remains heavily concentrated in a small number of countries, particularly the United Kingdom and the United States. Recent literature reviews noted that more than half of the eligible studies were from North America (Määttä et al., 2020[19]; Melvin et al., 2025[20]).
This imbalance limits the field in two ways. First, it constrains the understanding of how the national context, including education system design, welfare structures, cultural expectations and policy regimes, shapes the drivers of SAP. Attendance patterns emerge through interactions between students and their environments. Without broader geographic representation, the generalisability of findings remains uncertain. Second, it reduces the relevance of the evidence base for policymakers in underrepresented contexts, who have to rely often on findings from systems that differ considerably from their own. This weakens the contextual fit and precision of policy responses.
Expanding research to countries with diverse institutional arrangements (such as decentralised attendance monitoring, limited integrated of services or recent governance reforms) would strengthen explanatory power and policy relevance.
Lack of equity and intersectionality focus
Another key limitation is the inconsistent disaggregation of findings by equity-relevant factors. While many studies include these variables descriptively, few examine how (a) drivers and consequences of absence, and (b) policy/practice impacts vary across or within groups, or how they interact in intersecting ways. Moderation and interaction analyses are rare, and multilevel or explicitly intersectional designs remain uncommon.
In addition, many analyses, particularly on drivers and consequences of SAP, rely on cross-sectional data and include multiple predictors without explicitly considering the temporal ordering or causal pathways linking them to SAP. This can hide how some factors operate through others. Longitudinal research remains relatively limited across the wider evidence base. Together, these constraints hinder the identification of heterogenous effects and risks, thereby masking inequities that are crucial for interpretation and policy design.
Future research could prioritise systematic disaggregation across key equity dimensions (such as gender, socio-economic status, immigrant background, minority background, special education needs etc) and adopt designs that can capture variation both within and between groups. This includes greater use of longitudinal, multilevel and intersectional approaches, as well as analytical strategies that explicitly model causal pathways and interactions between factors. Strengthening the evidence base in this way would enable a more nuanced understanding of how risks accumulate and differ across populations, supporting the design of more targeted, equitable and effective policy responses.
Gaps in the system model
The evidence is still uneven across the different layers of the system described in Chapter 2. For example, protective factors, such as peer belonging, have been studied much less than negative experiences such as bullying. Connections between different parts of the system, such as how schools, families and services work together, are often discussed but rarely tested, especially during key transitions. Larger structural factors such as policy settings, enforcement capacity, accessibility and local service environments) are not consistently included in research. Instead, studies tend to focus more on individuals or schools, which make it harder to understand how different levels of the system interact. These gaps are partly due to the lack of studies that look at multiple levels at once, as well as limited collaboration across different fields and methods. Therefore, the bioecological framework is not used to its full potential.
Future research could focus more on positive peer factors, such as belonging and supportive relationships, alongside risks. It could also test how co-ordination between schools, families and services actually works, particularly during key transitions. In addition, studies could better integrate structural factors such as policy settings and access to services by using approaches that look at multiple levels and combine different disciplines, helping to better understand how all parts of the system connect.
Narrow focus on unauthorised absence
Some strands of the literature on SAP, particularly policy-oriented work, continue to focus on unauthorised absences. This reflects both a historical emphasis on behavioural non-compliance and an implicit assumption that authorised absence is less problematic or policy relevant. However, this distinction is not strongly supported by research. A narrow focus on unauthorised absence risks obscuring variation in both causal pathways and policy levers. For example, authorised absence may reflect not only health conditions but also parental employment patterns, housing instability or school-level flexibility: factors that span across the multiple ecological systems.
Future research could move beyond a narrow focus on unauthorised absence and adopt more comprehensive approaches that consider the full spectrum of attendance patterns. This includes systematically examining the drivers and consequences of authorised absence, as well as how different types of absence interact and accumulate over time. Greater attention could also be given to how institutional practices, such as recording and classification systems, shape observed patterns.
Drivers vary depending on the perspectives prioritised
Perceived drivers of SAP often vary depending on whose perspectives are prioritised. Studies centred on school staff tend to attribute causes to students and families, while those incorporating parents’ and students’ voices highlight school conditions and experiences (Ekstrand, 2015[21]; Gren-Landell et al., 2015[22]; Havik, Bru and Ertesvåg, 2013[23]; Heyne et al., 2019[24]). These differences suggest that SAP is a multi-layered phenomenon shaped by perspective, not only by context.
Future research could prioritise multi-informant and mixed-method approaches that integrate the views of students, families, teachers and health practitioners. Comparative and longitudinal studies would be particularly valuable to better understand how these perspectives interact over time and how school, family and system-level factors jointly influence attendance trajectories.
Underrepresentation of school staff’s views
Few quantitative studies have examined how staff beliefs, everyday school practices or perceived levers for change relate to SAP. Existing research tends to focus on fixed characteristics (e.g. teaching experience), overlooking how professional reasoning, leadership culture or institutional values may influence attendance. There is limited understanding of how school leaders or regional officials interpret the multi-causal nature of absence, or how those interpretations shape school- and system-level responses. Participatory and co-designed approaches, while increasingly used in intervention development, are rarely used to shape research questions, constructs or measurement strategies.
Greater inclusion of these perspectives could improve ecological validity by grounding research in the contexts where absence actually occurs. In many cases, exploratory and co-designed research will be needed to identify meaningful constructs and language before standardised instruments can be developed.
Underrepresentation of student views
Student perspectives on the drivers of SAP remain underrepresented. The evidence base often relies on crude binary data on attendance or non-attendance, whether it is collected from administrative sources, adult-reported perspectives or student surveys. While these sources provide valuable insights into patterns and correlates of SAP, they offer limited understanding of students’ own motivations, experiences and decision-making processes. As a result, the field lacks a sufficiently nuanced understanding of why students disengage from school, particularly in cases that are not easily explained by structural barriers. The limited inclusion of student perspectives on these issues can have several consequences, such as reduced effectiveness of policies and practices due to lack of relevance, reinforcement of existing inequalities as diverse student experiences are not captured and policies might fail to address the actual drivers of SAP if student experiences are not considered.
Future research could expand the use of qualitative and participatory methods for students - those attending school and those not currently attending school. It could integrate their voice in large-scale datasets, focus on lived experiences across heterogenous student populations, and involve students in the co-design of policies and practices.
Limited evidence on consequences, particularly beyond education
Even though SAP are consistently associated with adverse long-term outcomes, including lower educational attainment and worsened labour market outcomes (Chapter 3), the pathways linking absence to later life outcomes remain insufficiently understood. Existing research provides evidence of correlation, but far less clarity on how, when and through which mechanisms SAP translate into longer-term disadvantage.
A key limitation of the current evidence base is its short temporal scope. Many studies focus on attendance within a single academic year or educational phase, limiting insight into how attendance patterns evolve over time and accumulate across developmental stages. A further limitation is the lack of integrated data systems that connect school attendance records with outcomes in employment, health and social services, among others. This fragmentation restricts the ability to conduct life-course analyses and to quantify the long-term societal costs of SAP.
Longitudinal studies are needed to examine life-course trajectories of attendance, identifying early warning signs and opportunities for timely intervention. Future research could also link administrative datasets across sectors and develop longitudinal data infrastructures to enable analysis across domains.
Gaps in policy evaluation
Policy plays a central role in shaping the conditions under which SAP emerge, yet there is limited evidence on how absence patterns evolve in response to reforms, system-level interventions or broader socio-cultural shifts. Few studies examine the long-term effects of legislation, funding models or structural changes, limiting understanding of cumulative impacts and unintended consequences, particularly in the context of major system shocks (e.g. pandemics and funding reductions), structural shifts (e.g. decentralisation of attendance monitoring or mental health provision) or national and sub-national reforms on school attendance. More broadly, there is limited evidence on system-level policies, including how different measures interact when implemented together or in sequence, and how interventions that show promising results at small scale can be effectively scaled and sustained across diverse contexts.
Looking beyond system level policies, there is still a limited evidence base on some specific interventions or supports. Existing evidence is often short-term, context-specific or focused on individual components rather than comprehensive strategies. For instance, while punitive measures are widely used, the available evidence on them – particularly fines and grade retention – suggests mixed or even negative effects. Overall, however, these approaches are still insufficiently evaluated in terms of their longer-term effectiveness and potential unintended consequences. This area would warrant further investigation as countries continue to rely on punitive measures. For instance, it might be relevant to explore the value of punitive measures as a last resort, after an appropriate amount of support is provided.
There is even more limited evidence on the effectiveness of supportive measures beyond a few well-documented examples such as school meal provision, despite their prominence in policy frameworks. Similarly, curriculum reforms and pedagogical approaches aimed at increasing student engagement, now becoming more common across education systems, have not yet been widely evaluated in relation to attendance outcomes. As evidence accumulates, there is an opportunity to better understand how teaching and learning can be leveraged to support student outcomes.
Future research could prioritise rigorous, comparative and longitudinal evaluations that examine not only the effectiveness of individual interventions, but also policy interactions, implementation processes, scalability and cost-effectiveness. Greater attention should also be paid to potentially differential effects, both within populations (e.g. variation between student subgroups, such as those from disadvantaged backgrounds) and across contexts. Strengthening the evidence base in these areas would support more informed and context-sensitive policy design and help systems move beyond fragmented approaches towards more coherent and effective strategies to address school attendance problems.
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