Share your daily school attendance data
How schools can share daily attendance data.
Applies to England
From the start of the 2024 to 2025 academic year, it will be mandatory for schools to share their attendance data with the Department for Education (DfE).
The explains:
- how schools should share their data
- changes to the data being collected
- which CBDS identifiers to use
- how schools can make sure their data is accurate
DfE is collecting automatic daily attendance data from schools that agree to share their data with us. Getting daily attendance data:
- gives schools, local authorities and academy trusts access to more up-to-date pupil-level attendance data
- helps you meet the new expectations set out in working together to improve school attendance
- will not add to your school’s workload
Access your school attendance data to:
- help improve attendance by identifying trends and pupils who need support
- share attendance data with your board, governing body and local authority
Pupil attendance in schools data from national and local authorities is published on Explore Education Statistics every 2 weeks.
Who should send us data
Sending daily attendance data is voluntary for schools.
This includes:
- maintained nurseries
- primary schools
- middle-deemed primary schools
- middle-deemed secondary schools
- secondary schools
- all-through schools
- special schools (including non-maintained special schools)
- pupil referral units
- alternative provision
- academies (including free schools, university technical colleges (UTCs) and studio schools)
- city technology colleges (CTCs)
What data we need
We collect the following data items:
- forename
- surname
- date of birth
- unique pupil number
- sex
- ethnicity
- child looked after
- child previously looked after
- special educational needs (SEN) support
- education health and care plan
- free school meals
- national curriculum year group
- school unique reference number (URN)
- local authority code
- admission date
- expected leaving date (where available)
- actual leaving date
- child in need (where available)
- child protection plan (where available)
We’re requesting each of these data items for:
- pupils in reception
- all compulsory school-age pupils
- pupils in years 12 and 13 (if this is recorded in your management information (MI) system)
We’re not collecting information recorded in the comments field in an MI system.
The data will be refreshed for any codes you change after you start sharing data.
How to send us your attendance data
The data will be collected by a company called Wonde.
If your school already uses Wonde’s secure portal
Wonde will ask you via its portal to agree to share your attendance data. Once you agree, it will connect with your MI system to extract and securely transfer the data to us automatically each day. You can opt out of this data-sharing at any time.
If your school does not currently use Wonde’s secure portal
You’ll be contacted by Wonde’s team to help you install the secure portal. If you’ve not been contacted by them, first check your junk folder, then email support@wonde.com. There will be no costs involved and it will enable you to share your attendance data with us.
Wonde can extract data from these MI systems:
- Arbor
- Bromcom
- Compass
- Integris
- IRIS iSAMs
- ScholarPack
- SchoolBase
- SchoolPod
- SIMs
- SOS (XP-Trust)
- PupilAsset (Horizons)
How this data will be used
All data we are collecting is subject to a . No information that identifies a child will be shared publicly.
We will use this data to identify national, regional and local trends, and patterns in school attendance.
We will share our analysis with members of the Attendance Action Alliances. We will not share school-identifiable-level data with the national Attendance Action Alliance, but we may share it with local Attendance Action Alliances. Read our to find out more.
We will not use this school-level data for:
- Ofsted or regional director decision-making
- judgements about what constitutes a school causing concern
- inspection, academisation or decisions to place a school in or remove it from a trust
- funding purposes
A is available for this collection.
Last updated 11 April 2024 + show all updates
-
Added information about mandatory attendance data sharing, which begins in September 2024.
-
Updated the list of MI systems.
-
Updated the data protection impact assessment (DPIA).
-
Updated 'How this data will be used' section with the latest versions of the 'privacy notice', 'data collection principles' and 'data protection impact assessment (DPIA)'.
-
Information on accessing your school attendance data has been removed. A link has been added to a new page containing this information.
-
Updated the final sentence in the section 'What data we need'. It has been changed from 'The data will be refreshed for codes changed within 7 days of registration' to 'The data will be refreshed for any codes you change after you start sharing data'.
-
Updated the data protection information in the privacy notice in 'How this data will be used'.
-
Added 'date of birth' to 'We collect the following data items'.
-
Updated the list of data items in the ‘What data we need’ section. Added information on school identifiable level data in the ‘How this data will be used’ section. Also updated the ‘data protection impact assessment (DPIA)’, ‘privacy notice’ and ‘data collection principles’ documents to reflect that this collection is now business as usual. Sections 2 (a), 3 and 6 in the DPIA have been updated. The data is being shared with schools, trusts and local authorities, with aggregated attendance statistics being published.
-
Information about when reports will be ready to view has been added under 'Accessing your school's attendance reports'.
-
Updated information on accessing your school attendance reports including how get access to view your education data.
-
First published.