If you’ve stood at the front door trying to coax your child out, knowing they’re not being defiant but genuinely can’t face it, you’re not alone. This data shows exactly how widespread that experience is. For children with SEND, struggling to attend school isn’t an edge case. It’s the most common thing in this community that nobody in a position of power wants to name.
In the 2024/25 school year, more than a third of children with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) were persistently absent, against one in seven of their classmates with no identified needs. This post walks you through what the Department for Education’s official figures show about the gap between SEND pupils and their peers, and points you to your rights if your own child is struggling to get there.
Persistent absence falls hardest on SEND children
A pupil is “persistently absent” if they miss 10% or more of school, which works out at roughly one day a fortnight across the year. If your child is dipping in and out that often, they’re losing months of learning before summer term even arrives. The clearest way to see just how unequal that picture is: compare children by their SEN status.
Pupil absence in schools in England, academic year 2024/25
Children with an EHCP were persistently absent at 2.3 times the rate of children with no identified SEN, and children on SEN support at 1.9 times the rate. (Those multiples are our calculation from the DfE rates above.) For comparison, the rate across all pupils was 18.1%. The overall absence rate tells the same story: 12.7% of school time was missed by children with an EHCP, against 5.8% for children with no identified needs. That’s not a small gap you might close with better communication between school and home. It’s a structural difference in how this system affects your child versus a child without identified needs.
Severe absence is still getting worse
The most serious measure is severe absence, where a child misses half of school or more. Half. That’s a child who is barely in education in any meaningful sense. And here the picture isn’t improving for SEND pupils. It’s getting worse.
Pupil absence in schools in England, academic year 2024/25
A child with an EHCP was around 6.2 times more likely to be severely absent than a child with no identified SEN, and a child on SEN support around 3.7 times more likely. And while severe absence edged down for children with no SEN in 2024/25, it carried on rising for children with an EHCP. So as the overall picture nudged slightly in the right direction, your child’s group moved the other way.
Pupil absence in schools in England, academic year 2024/25
Severe absence among children with an EHCP has risen from 3.3% before the pandemic to 7.5% in 2024/25. Behind each of those percentages is a child who is, in effect, out of education, and a family trying to hold everything together while fighting for something that should have been in place years ago.
Persistent absence is a symptom, not a choice. For many children with SEND it is emotionally based school avoidance, driven by anxiety and unmet need, not truancy. Fining or prosecuting a family rarely fixes it, and a punitive response to a disability-related difficulty can itself be unlawful.
What this means, and your rights
If your child is struggling to attend, you’re not the problem. The data is consistent and it points in one direction: this system is failing children with SEND at scale. But there are statutory duties that apply, and clear routes to get help.
Ask for the reason to be looked at, not just the absence. If attendance is dropping, push for the school to consider whether your child’s needs are being met, and to record the difficulty as needs-based rather than simply marking it as unauthorised.
- If anxiety is keeping your child from school, emotionally based school avoidance and the legal routes explains what to ask for and the duties that apply.
- If your child has been put on a reduced timetable, that guide covers when one is unlawful and how to challenge it.
- If your child can’t attend any school for now, education out of school and section 19 sets out the council’s duty to arrange education.
- If the school isn’t putting support in place, what to do when a school refuses to help walks through your next steps.
Methodology and sources
All the absence figures are from the Department for Education’s official statistics release Pupil absence in schools in England, academic year 2024/25, published in March 2026. The figures cover state-funded primary, secondary and special schools. Persistent absence means missing 10% or more of possible sessions; severe absence means missing 50% or more; the overall absence rate is the share of all possible sessions missed. These are three separate measures and we have kept them apart throughout.
The rates by SEN status are quoted directly from that release (for persistent absence: 34.3% for an EHCP, 27.8% for SEN support and 14.7% for no identified SEN). The “times more likely” multiples are our own calculation, dividing the DfE rates (for example 34.3 divided by 14.7). The severe-absence trend shows the cleanly comparable post-pandemic years; we have left out 2020/21 and 2021/22, when COVID rules changed how absence was counted, and quoted the pre-pandemic 2018/19 figure in the text for context. Data accessed June 2026.