On 30 April 2025, the Education for Inclusive Societies Project asked OECD countries, EU Member States and OECD accession countries to respond to the OECD Policy Survey on School Attendance Problems. The survey aimed to collect comparative information on education systems’ policies and practices to address school attendance problems (SAP). The information collected provides a unique opportunity to compare education jurisdictions’ definitions, monitoring practices, drivers, consequences and policies to address SAP. No such comparable data is regularly collected from OECD countries, EU Member States and OECD accession countries.
There are important differences between countries with respect to the formulation of policies and practices to tackle SAP. However, detailed information is limited. Responses gathered through the survey contribute to an OECD/EU-wide effort to better understand how education systems are responding to SAP. By identifying common patterns and promising practices, the survey findings help shape future policy dialogue and, ultimately, support efforts to ensure all young people can participate meaningfully in education – benefiting not only students themselves, but also the schools, communities and countries they are part of.
Efforts were made to create a comprehensive data collection. However, the findings cannot be regarded as exhaustive of the topics covered due to various limitations, such as survey length, international comparability, and the balance between clarity and concision.
The survey was divided into seven modules with 35 items:
Definitions and trends in school attendance problems (four items);
Monitoring of school attendance (ten items);
Drivers of school attendance problems (one item);
Consequences of school attendance problems (two items);
Policies related to the governance of school attendance problems (nine items);
Policies related to capacity building (three items); and
Policies related to school-level interventions (six items).
Countries were asked to fill out the survey considering public primary and secondary educational levels (i.e. ISCED 1-3). Vocational programmes that target adult learners were not the focus of the survey. Countries in which education is a devolved responsibility were asked to fill out a separate response for each sub-national entity. In these cases, sub-national examples included in the report should be understood as illustrative examples of practices and approaches that may also exist, in similar forms, in other parts of the country, even where they are not explicitly mentioned. Given the combination of national and sub-national entities in the survey responses, we refer to the responding participants as “education systems”. Education systems were responding to the survey in an electronic format using LimeSurvey throughout May, June, July and August 2025. In total, 45 education systems from 35 countries submitted their responses: Austria, Belgium (Flemish and French Communities separately), Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain (one submission on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports, and separate submissions for Aragon, Catalonia, Ceuta, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja and Madrid), Sweden, Thailand, Türkiye and the United Kingdom (separate submissions for England, Scotland and Wales).
Given that policy contexts change in time, it is important to regard this information as representative of the year 2025 in the participating education systems. In some cases, education systems provided additional information using the available text boxes or via email. These are used to complement and specify quantitative information.