School absence – missed attendance, as well as fixed and permanent exclusion – is strongly associated with lower pupil attainment. It also disproportionately affects pupils from certain socio-demographic groups, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those eligible for free school meals (FSM), with research from the Education Policy Institute indicating that this is a significant driver of the disadvantage attainment gap.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, absence rates have risen sharply. Around one in five pupils are now persistently absent, with a small but significant minority classed as severely absent. In response, the EEF and the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) partnered in 2021 to evaluate programmes aimed at improving attendance, behaviour and safety through the joint funding round, A Safe, Positive Place to Learn.
It is now mandatory for schools to share attendance data with the DfE, creating a national Attendance dashboard.
Persistent absence and exclusion disproportionately affect the pupils we most want to support: those experiencing disadvantage, including pupils eligible for FSM and those with SEND, where needs and risks often overlap. These pupils are more likely to face barriers linked to behaviour, mental health, and socio-economic pressure. They are also more likely to be excluded or persistently absent. With nearly half of the disadvantage gap being present by the age of 11, higher rates of absence for these pupils compounds educational inequality.
Attendance continues to be a salient national policy issue, as demonstrated by government’s commitments in the Schools White Paper, prioritisation by DfE’s regional school improvement (RISE) teams, and proposals as a distinct evaluation area by Ofsted. This continued prioritisation, reinforces both the urgency and opportunity to invest in scalable, school-led approaches to improve attendance and reduce absence – including exclusions – as a critical lever for improving attainment, wellbeing, and long-term outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.
The evidence suggests there is no single, well-established solution to improving attendance and reducing exclusions, though a range of approaches show some promise.
Reviews by the EEF and YEF highlight targeted parental and family engagement, mentoring, and responsive attendance strategies as among the few interventions with some positive effects on attendance, though results are mixed and study quality is often weak.
For exclusions, social and emotional learning and classroom behaviour management have the strongest evidence for improving behaviour and reducing the risk of suspension, particularly when interventions are well implemented and explicitly designed to reduce exclusions. Impacts tend to be greater in secondary schools.
Overall, however, much of the evidence is US-based, lacks long-term follow-up, and underrepresents UK settings, pupils with SEND, and whole-system approaches.
Longitudinal research from the UK shows that absenteeism – especially around key transitions – has lasting negative effects on attainment and later outcomes, disproportionately affecting disadvantaged pupils. This underscores the need for earlier, better-targeted and more robustly evaluated interventions.
Synthesis
We carried out substantial review and scoping work to strengthen our understanding of attendance and exclusions and to inform future investment in this area. This culminated in A Safe, Positive Place to Learn, a joint initiative with YEF, underpinned by a comprehensive evidence-gathering phase.
The scoping phase to inform the round included:
- an internal Attendance Interventions Rapid Evidence Assessment, led by the EEF;
- a toolkit technical report on interventions to reduce exclusions, led by YEF; and
- a set of stakeholder engagement workshops with school staff, young people, policy and academic representatives.
Mobilisation
We’ve also focused on supporting schools to apply the evidence in practice. We developed an online resource, Supporting School Attendance, to help schools reflect on their current approaches and plan effective attendance strategies.
Alongside this, the Research Schools Network worked closely with the Department for Education, contributing to regional attendance conferences in Spring 2025 and sharing practical guidance on effective implementation. Many Research Schools have also produced additional resources and hosted events focused on improving attendance, behaviour and pupils’ sense of belonging.
Our funding rounds
A Safe, Positive Place to Learn was a joint EEF – YEF funding round in Spring 2022 to build the evidence on how best to support children and young people aged 5 – 18-years-old who are at highest risk of absenteeism and exclusion, particularly those from disadvantaged or vulnerable backgrounds. We funded school-wide and targeted approaches to improving attendance, engagement and school inclusion, with the aim of improving attainment and reducing the risk of involvement in violence.
The priorities identified as part of the round were:
- Anti-bullying programmes: prevent or reduce bullying by supporting both potential perpetrators and victims, often using whole-school and targeted approaches.
- Classroom behaviour management: embed strategies to maintain discipline, foster a supportive environment, and promote positive student behaviour.
- Internal alternative provision: help at-risk children stay in school through on-site nurture units and teacher support for behavioural needs.
- Needs-led attendance interventions: address individual reasons for low attendance through targeted, often multi-agency, support.
- Parent/carer communication interventions: provide personalised information and tools to improve parent – child communication and support regular attendance.
- Social and emotional learning: improve behaviour, decision-making and interactions, with targeted focus on pupils at risk of absenteeism or exclusion.
- Targeted family engagement: collaboratively work with families to identify attendance barriers and provide intensive, tailored support.
There are mixed results from the evaluations that have published to date. Some studies have not been able to demonstrate evidence of impact, even where interventions were seen as feasible and acceptable. Some of the below studies indicate emerging practice-level promise, but have been unable to demonstrate evidence of impact, even when interventions were seen as feasible and acceptable.
- BITUP (Updating parents on number of days missed: this efficacy trial showed that texting parents to let them know how many days of school their child has missed can lead to some small improvements in attendance, but how the message is framed matters.
- Internal Provision: no firm evidence that different internal provision models led to better impact on attendance, and no one size fits all model means that there are variability and a combination of practices that exist.
- Attendance and Family Liaison Officers (AFLO): introducing AFLOs did not make a meaningful difference to persistent absence or attendance overall. AFLO roles and responsibilities varied significantly and conditions for perceived AFLO effectiveness highlighted the need for senior leadership buy-in, wider staff support and quality data systems.
- Trauma-informed short term managed intervention centres: found that some elements of the programme showed promise, but struggled to show sustained improvements and integrate into school’s everyday practices and policies.
- United Against Bullying Plus: staff and pupils reported improved awareness and understanding of bullying, and participating schools demonstrated changes to their whole-school anti-bullying approaches, practice, and strategies. However, there was limited evidence of change to bullying behaviours or attendance.
A commonality across all four studies is the importance of context, variation and enabling conditions. Attendance interventions were rarely delivered as a single, standardised model: schools adapt provision to need, culture and capacity, and sustaining change depended heavily on leadership support, staff capability, and alignment with wider school systems.
Prior to this joint funding round, the EEF had also supported programmes where attendance featured as a secondary outcome, most notably Learning Together (Inclusive), which showed promising impacts on school belonging and reductions in truancy and disciplinary involvement. An efficacy trial of Learning Together Mental Health, an enhanced whole-school mental health approach, is now being set up and is expected to further explore impacts on attendance and engagement
Completed trials and pilot studies
| Highest-level EEF project | Project | Delivery team | Year groups | Level of intervention | Description | Headline results | Beyond the headline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Efficacy | Learning Together (INCLUSIVE) | University College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | Year 8 –10 | Whole school | Learning Together Mental Health (formerly known as INCLUSIVE) is a whole-school programme using restorative practice and pupil-staff ‘action groups’ to support better pupil sense of belonging, wellbeing, reduce bullying and improve attendance and attainment. | + 2 months (GCSE Attainment 8 scores) Reduced student truancy and participation in school disciplinary procedures at 36 months. | Realist evaluation shows evidence of promise in improving attendance and reducing exclusions. No padlocks were assigned to this initial trial because the attainment outcome was an additional evaluation and EEF standards were not followed at set up of the trial. Another efficacy trial is being set up to follow the EEF’s evaluation standard. |
| Efficacy | Engage in Education | Catch22 | Year 9 –10 | Small group targeted | Engage in Education provided small group and one-to-one support for pupils in Years 9 and 10 who were at high risk of exclusion. The programme, which was created by Catch22, focused on pupils with low attainment, prior records of truancy and exclusion, and special educational needs. Targeted pupils received sessions in areas such as communication skills and anger management, and support from a keyworker in areas of identified need over 12 weeks. School teachers were also offered training. | 0 months progress; problems with testing No impact on exclusions No padlock assignment | |
| Efficacy | Incredible Years® Teacher Classroom Management | University of Exeter | Year 1 – 2 | Teacher level | A continuing professional development programme that aims to develop teachers’ classroom management techniques, to improve behaviour in the classroom, reduce disrupted learning, and increase attainment. | COVID-affected; no measurement of attendance and exclusions but recommended as future work for longitudinal analysis. | |
| Efficacy | Achievement for All | Year 5- – 6 | Whole school | A whole-school improvement programme that aims to improve the academic and social outcomes of primary school pupils. Trained Achievement for All coaches deliver a bespoke two-year programme to schools through monthly coaching sessions that focus on leadership, learning, parental engagement and wider outcomes, in addition to focusing on improving outcomes for a target group of children (which largely consists of the lowest 20% of attainers). | -2 months on reading 5 padlocks | No impact on self-esteem, goals and aspiration, perceptions of how supportive their families were, or the attendance of target children. | |
| Efficacy | Healthy Minds | Bounce Forward | Year 7 –10 | Whole School | A personal, social, and health education curriculum for secondary school pupils (Years 7 – 10), which aims to improve pupils’ wellbeing and health-related outcomes. | 0 months 2 padlocks | There was some evidence of lower levels of absence, especially in Year 7 pupils, and some indication of fewer exclusions among pupils eligible for free school meals in schools that received the Healthy Minds programme compared with similar pupils in schools that did not. |
| Efficacy | Project Based Learning | The Innovation Unit | Year 7 | Project Based Learning (PBL) is a pedagogical approach that seeks to provide Year 7 pupils with independent and group learning skills to meet both the needs of the Year 7 curriculum as well as support their learning in future stages of their education. It particularly aims to improve their engagement in learning as well as practical literacy skills. This trial evaluates a specific type of PBL known as ‘Learning through REAL Projects’. | –2 months 1 padlock No impact on attendance. | –3 months for pupils eligible for free school meals | |
| Efficacy | Texting Students and Study Supporters | Behavioural Insights Team | Year 12 – 13 | Pupil level | Aimed to use text messages to improve GCSE English and maths resit pass rates by prompting college students to attend classes and exams, engage with study materials and form better study habits, either through direct contact with the learner or through prompting a dialogue with a nominated study supporter, e.g. a family member. Over the course of the academic year, weekly text messages were sent to students (a total of 36 for English or 37 for maths). | 0 months (GCSE resit) 4 padlocks No impact on attendance. | |
| Efficacy | BITUP: – Updating Parents on Number of School Days Missed | Behavioural Insights Team | Year 7 - – 11 | Pupil level | A trial to test the impact of sending parents text messages about their child’s attendance on school attendance rates. | Pupils in the intervention group were, on average, absent for 0.21 fewer days across the academic year compared to those in the control group. This equates to an 0.10 percentage point increase in the average pupil attendance rate across half-terms two to six. | The programme had a larger impact on pupils eligible for free school meals, female pupils and Year 8 (who were on average absent for 0.51, 0.35 and 0.61 fewer days across the year). These results may have a lower security rating than the overall findings due to a smaller number of pupils. |
| Pilot (small RCT) | ThinkForward | Impetus Private Equity Foundation | Year 10 – 11 | Targeted | One to one coaching for at-risk 14 – 16-year-olds. | The trial did not find evidence that the programme had an impact on GCSE scores, absences, or attitudes. This was a small pilot randomised controlled trial so these findings have low security. | |
| Pilot | United Against Bullying Plus | NCB (Anti-Bullying Alliance) and Kidscape | Year 8 into Year 9 | Whole school | A multi-component anti-bullying intervention that offers support to schools to implement a whole-school, targeted and family response to bullying. | The pilot findings show some early promise. The evaluation found that the programme led to improved staff and pupil awareness and understanding of bullying, as well as staff confidence in addressing it. Pupils demonstrated improved short-term recognition of bullying and bullying behaviours following the workshop, and schools made clear progress in strengthening their anti-bullying policies and practices. | Overall, the universal and whole-school elements functioned as intended and appear to have driven meaningful improvements in practice. In contrast, the targeted components require further refinement before robust evaluation. |
| Pilot | Trauma Informed Short-Term Managed Intervention Centres to improve behaviour and reduce exclusions | Ormiston Academies Trust | Year 7 – 10 | Targeted | A managed, manualised short-term intervention (5 weeks) based on Trauma Informed Approaches and developed by the Westminster Education Centre. It aims to reduce the risk and number of fixed-term exclusions within mainstream secondary schools. | Overall, the evaluation findings suggest that the MIC model was broadly feasible to implement and reached the intended pupils. Most pupils who completed a placement reintegrated back to their mainstream setting. However, mainstream staff had mixed views on the success of reintegration planning as well as the model’s impact on behaviour and longer term outcomes | Overall, while the MIC model was broadly feasible to implement, the intervention requires further refinement before progressing to a further evaluation or efficacy trial. This includes - strengthening of the trauma-informed training principles - whole school engagement to support sustained reintegration for pupils - and identification of a viable funding model. |
Trials and pilot studies in progress
| Highest-level EEF project | Project | Delivery team | Year groups | Level of intervention | Description | Headline results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Efficacy | Grassroots (led by YEF) | Behavioural Insights Team | Year 7 – 9 | Whole school | An anti-bullying programme that aims to reduce bullying and conflict in schools by empowering well-connected pupils to positively impact their fellow pupils’ prosocial attitudes and behaviours. | The report will be published in Autumn 2026. |
| Efficacy | Boys Development Programme (led by YEF) | Future Men | Year 7 – 11 | Targeted | A 12-week targeted, social-emotional learning programme for boys at risk of disengagement, exclusion, anti-social behaviour and criminal activity. | The report will be published in Spring 2027. |
Completed choices evaluations
| Highest-level EEF project | Project | Delivery team | Year groups | Level of intervention | Description | Headline results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School Choices | Internal Provision | NFER The Difference | Years 7 – 10 | Whole School | This study aimed to explore different approaches to internal provision to support students considered“at risk” of persistent absence and/or exclusion and the impacts of these different approaches on student outcomes, including attendance. | no firm evidence that different internal provision models led to better impact on attendance, and no one size fits all model means that there are variability and a combination of practices that exist. |
| School Choices | Attendance and Family Liaison Officers (AFLO) | ICF | Years 7 – 10 | Whole School | This study aimed to explore whether the choice to employ attendance and family liaison officers in schools can lead to improvements in pupil attendance. | Introducing AFLOs did not make a meaningful difference to persistent absence or attendance overall. AFLO roles and responsibilities varied significantly and conditions for perceived AFLO effectiveness highlighted the need for senior leadership buy-in, wider staff support and quality data systems. |