Pupil attendance will be graded by Ofsted for the first time under new plans to shake-up the way schools are judged.
One-word ratings are set to be replaced by a scorecard containing ten separate grades based on ‘key areas’, The Telegraph has reported.
Attendance will be one of these new performance ratings, as well as how well schools instill British values and prepare children for the outside world.
Other key areas will include the content of the school’s curriculum and the quality of teaching.
Labour announced back in September it would scrap one-word Ofsted judgements with immediate effect following the tragic death of Ruth Perry.
The headteacher took her own life after an inspection downgraded her primary school in Caversham, Reading, from ‘outstanding’ to ‘inadequate’ with a coroner concluding that it had contributed to her death.
The government is expected to introduce the ‘report card system’ in September 2025 with details of the plans laid out in the new year.
Currently schools are being graded across four existing sub-categories – quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management.
The particular focus on attendance in the new system comes amid soaring truancy numbers since the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the 2022/23 school year, more than 25 per cent of pupils missed at least one day each fortnight – meaning they were ‘persistently absent’.
While Ofsted has always considered pupil attendance when grading schools, under the new system it will be more prominent.
Schools will be expected to have a clear strategy in place to encourage high attendance among pupils.
In August, the government tried tackling the problem by increasing fines for unauthorised absences from £60 to £80 for the first offence.
But a poll earlier this month suggested that the penalties were not enough to deter parents from taking their children out of school during term time.
Ofsted previously awarded one of four headline grades to schools it inspects: ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’.
The scrapping of this system in September delighted teaching unions, while the family of headteacher Mrs Perry said they were ‘relived’.
Her sister Professor Julia Waters, said it was a ‘relief that no other headteacher will have to go through what Ruth went through’.
She said: ‘She [Ruth] had a really bruising inspection that left her very fragile and that word ‘inadequate’ — she just went over and over it, she kept repeating it, she wrote it down.
‘It was that feeling not just that she’d had the terrible shock and trauma of a completely unexpected bad Ofsted, but that she was still anticipating the public humiliation that came with that.’
However, the plans have been criticised by members of the Tory party.
Shadow education secretary Damian Hinds previously said that scrapping the ‘vital’ headline inspection outcome ‘is not in the best interest of pupils or parents’.
Former Tory schools minister Nick Gibb added: ‘If the Ofsted judgments are not crystal clear, the danger is they cease to be something parents look at when choosing a school. You run the risk of overall standards declining.’
has contacted Ofsted and the Department of Education for comment.
The family of tragic headteacher Ruth Perry say they are ‘delighted and relieved’ at the scrapping of one-word judgments.
The 53-year-old took her life last year as she awaited publication of an Ofsted report which she knew had downgraded her Caversham Primary in Reading from ‘outstanding’ to ‘inadequate’.
Although most aspects of the school were good, inspectors said it must be downgraded because of issues with the safeguarding paperwork.
The report said records of safeguarding concerns were ‘poor’ and that not all the required employment checks were complete for some staff.
It added: ‘Some staff have not had the necessary training to be able to record concerns accurately using the school’s online system.’
The report also noted there was not always ‘appropriate supervision during break times’. Last December, a coroner concluded the Ofsted inspection in November 2022 ‘contributed’ to Mrs Perry’s death.
It resulted in MPs recommending developing ‘an alternative’ to single-word judgments that ‘better captures the complex nature of a school’s performance’.
Mrs Perry’s sister, Julia Waters, said: ‘We are delighted and relieved that the Government has decided to take this long-overdue step.’