Monitor your school attendance: fix common issues
Updated 17 July 2025
Applies to England
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This guidance explains how to fix common issues with your school attendance data and tell us about any new issues.
If your ‘number of pupils’ or other results look wrong
Your total number of pupils is based on all pupils you’re sharing attendance data for.
This includes pupils:
- who left during the current academic year
- recorded in your management information system (MIS) as due to start school but did not stay at the school
- of non-compulsory school age (if you’re sharing data for them – you can check via your Wonde portal data permissions)
You can use filters to show or remove groups of pupils from your attendance reports.
How to remove leavers from your results
If you want to remove leavers from your results, select ‘all current pupils’ in the leavers filter.
To get a list of your leavers, go to the school page in your and use the leavers filter. This will identify leavers in the current or previous academic year.
Correct use of leaving dates
Some schools have previously recorded leaving dates incorrectly in their MIS. Making errors in recording pupil admission, deletion and attendance data has a significant impact on data in your school attendance reports.
Leaving dates should only be used when a pupil has left the school and meets the grounds for deletion, as set out in working together to improve school attendance.
Pupil characteristics data and filters
Results for pupil characteristics are taken from the latest available record in your MIS. This includes data for:
- special education needs (SEN) support
- free school meals (FSM)
- education health and care plan (EHCP)
- looked-after child (LAC)
- previously looked-after child (PLAC)
- child in need (CIN)
- child protection plan (CPP)
SEN support pupil numbers do not include those with an EHCP. When you share your attendance data, you need to use a separate data permission, via Wonde, to share data for EHCP pupils.
To ensure your data is accurate, check:
- you’re sharing the relevant data item in your MIS via your Wonde portal
- your MIS has been updated with the latest information for each pupil you are sharing attendance data for
- you’ve used pupil SEN provision code ‘K’ to indicate a pupil’s SEN support status
The Department for Education (DfE) does not currently collect pupil premium via the daily attendance data collection.
If any data is missing
If you think any pupils or data items are missing, this can impact your overall results in the tool.
Check you:
- are using DfE attendance codes correctly (you’ll find these in Chapter 8 of the working together to improve school attendance)
- are using any customised session or lesson codes
- have approved all required data sharing permission via your Wonde portal
Schools missing from trust or local authority report
If a school is missing from the local authority or trust reports, check if they’re sharing daily attendance data with DfE before submitting an enquiry.
Year groups, names and ethnicity not displaying correctly
Some year group names currently show inside brackets – for example (10).
The data in your reports reflects what’s written in your MIS. This does not impact your overall attendance figures. Check how these items have been written in your MIS before reporting an issue.