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Ask Arbor Insights · National data layer
Sunday, 2 August 2026 · England
LIVE
One in three English schools, live

A nationally representative picture of education.
Live.

Every dot is ten schools — 13,163 in total — sharing operational data with Ask Arbor Insights today. Coloured by half-term attendance benchmark. This is what a nationally representative live picture of English education looks like.

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Fig. 01 · Attendance across every school in scope
n=13,163 schools
2025/26 · share of pupils by attendance band
  • On track (≥90%)80%
  • Persistent absence (10–50% missed)18%
  • Severe absence (≥50% missed)2%
What you’re seeing: ~2% of pupils across schools sharing data with Arbor are severely absent — missing 50% or more of their possible sessions. No prior dataset has surfaced this picture at this granularity, daily.
What you’re seeing
13,163
schools
~54% of state-funded
4.12M
pupils
946
multi-academy trusts
152 / 152
local authorities
100% coverage
Daily
refresh cadence
attendance · half-termly for census

The hooks the system is asking about

What national operational data adds to each policy hook.

LIVE

The absence crisis

7.3%
of pupil sessions missed · 2025/26
Up from 5.4% pre-pandemic (2018/19)
Pre-pandemic 5.4%Today 7.3%
Arbor answers

Daily attendance for every state-funded school, banded against like-for-like benchmarks

The long tail

160,497
children missing 50%+ of school · Spring 2025
Record high · 167% above pre-pandemic levels
Arbor answers

Cohort drilldown to the school level

SEND demand is outrunning supply

+15.0%
year-on-year, 2025/26 · 6.8% of all pupils
SEN support covers a further 16.3%
Arbor answers

Live EHCP cohort movement at LA and trust level

Attendance × SEND

38.5%
persistent absence among pupils with an EHCP
vs ~18.6% for pupils with no identified SEN
  • EHCP38.5%
  • SEN support30.1%
  • FSM34.1%
  • EAL19.2%
Arbor answers

Two-way crosstab live across every school

The disadvantage picture

26.7%
of pupils eligible for free school meals · 2025/26
Pupil premium reaches ~27.5%; over two in five (40.3%) are disadvantaged, and 21.9% are EAL
  • FSM26.7%
  • Pupil premium27.5%
  • Disadvantaged40.3%
  • EAL21.9%
Arbor answers

Pupil-level disadvantage signals — FSM, pupil premium, EAL, mobility — cross-referenced with attendance, attainment and behaviour outcomes

Suspensions climbing

3.2%
of pupils suspended at least once · 2024/25
Up from ~2.0% pre-pandemic (2018/19)
Pre-pandemic 2%Today 3.2%
Arbor answers

Suspension and lost-learning trends by pupil group, live across every school

Sources: Arbor national operational data · DfE pupil absence & suspension statistics · school & SEND census · CSJ severe-absence tracker

What the dataset can answer

The questions only national-scale, longitudinal data can answer.

  • SEND × AttendanceHow does persistent absence for EHCP pupils compare across LA's, and which are bucking the trend?
  • DisadvantageWhich regions serve the most disadvantaged intakes yet outperform on attendance?
  • SEND demandHow has EHCP prevalence evolved over the last three years?
  • Vulnerability × AttendanceHow does attendance for looked-after children compare with their peers?
  • BehaviourWhere are school suspension patterns diverging from their local benchmark?
  • AttainmentHow is the gap in KS4 attainment between FSM and non-FSM pupils changing?

Built for the system

Complementary infrastructure — not a substitute.

Universities & research bodies

Nationally representative cohort analysis. Longitudinal tracking across schools, regions and pupil characteristics. No FOI gauntlet, no per-LA data deals.

  • Cohort sampling at national scale
  • Longitudinal data back to Sep 2019
  • Privacy-preserving aggregation thresholds

Multi-academy trusts & local authorities

See where your schools sit in the national distribution. Identify portfolio outliers against a like-for-like benchmark — before DfE flags them.

  • Like-for-like national benchmarks
  • Portfolio anomaly detection
  • Cross-dataset trust-level reporting

Policymakers & government

Answer system-level questions in minutes rather than commissioning year-long studies. Complementary infrastructure, not a substitute for census or inspection.

  • Real-time policy effect tracking
  • Cross-cohort, cross-dataset queries
  • Methodologically defensible aggregations
Methodology

All insights are derived from anonymised, aggregated operational data.

Minimum cohort threshold of 10 pupils per aggregation. No individual pupil records. UK GDPR & DPA 2018 compliant.

Not in scope: health records, social-care files, safeguarding logs, free-text notes.

  • AttendanceSession- and lesson-level marks, all state-funded schools
  • AttainmentKS4 Attainment 8, EBacc & pass rates; assessment marks
  • BehaviourSuspensions, exclusions, internal exclusions, reason codes
  • SENDEHCP cohort, SEN support stage, attendance crosswalk
  • DemographicsFSM & Ever-6 FSM, pupil premium, disadvantaged, EAL, ethnicity
  • WorkforceStaff contracts, posts & pay scales, absence, cover