The lifelong impact of missing school

BCS70 is helping to cast new light on the potential long-term consequences of missed education.

Official statistics from the Department for Education show that rates of school absence have increased since the Covid-19 pandemic. So, understanding what missing school can mean for children’s futures is more important than ever.

There has been lots of research into the immediate impacts of missing school. But does it make a difference to people’s lives 30 years on? Now, thanks to information you have shared with BCS70, researchers have been able to investigate this.

What we asked you  

As part of the Age 10 Survey, your teachers answered some questions. This included how many days of school you had missed in the last term because of illness or any other reason.

During your lives, you have told us about your qualifications, the jobs you have had, any time you spent out of the workforce (for whatever reason), any periods of unemployment, and your weekly earnings.

What the researchers found  

Researchers at the University of Strathclyde analysed the information teachers had shared along with the information you have given up to age 42.

At age 10, about half of you had missed more than two days of school in a term. The researchers looked for connections between missing a lot of school (five days in a term) and circumstances and experiences in adult life.

They found that students who had missed five days in one term were more likely to not have any academic or vocational qualifications by age 42 compared to students who had not missed any school. This was still the case even when the researchers considered other factors that might have affected the qualifications people got.

The researchers also looked at how you had spent most of the ten years leading up to the Age 42 Survey. Missing five days of school per term was linked to spending more time not in paid work, whether due to unemployment, raising a family or other reasons.

But the researchers’ analysis did not find any link between missing lots of school and the type of work people were doing at age 42, earning less money, or spending more time in unemployment over the past 10 years.

Why this research matters  

These findings from BCS70 highlight how frequent school absence can pose a risk to gaining qualifications, not just at the end of compulsory education but through into adult life.

The researchers behind this study say that taking action on this should be a priority, particularly given the drop in school attendance since the pandemic. They recommend policies should focus on:

• improving the health and wellbeing of children who frequently miss school for health issues.
• offering additional support through tutoring during and after school.
• making more targeted opportunities for lifelong learning to help people gain skills and qualifications.

Read the full research paper  

The long-term consequences of early school absences for educational attainment and labour market outcomes by Jascha Dräger, Markus Klein and Edward Sosu was published in the British Educational Research Journal in 2024.