Northern Ireland school attendance: the school-level picture for 2024/25
NI’s 92.1% attendance headline hides a 4.2-point gap between primary and post-primary. We’ve published school-level attendance for around 1,000 NI schools — here’s what the data shows and how to read it.
Key facts
- The average NI primary school recorded 94.0% attendance in 2024/25 vs 89.8% at post-primary — a 4.2-point gap on school-level averages. The official pupil-weighted phase rates are 93.8% and 90.2% (a 3.6-point gap); our figures weight every school equally.
- 323 NI schools — almost one in three with published data — achieved 95% attendance or better.
- 29 post-primary schools and 10 special schools recorded attendance below 85%, the level at which a typical pupil misses more than a full day a fortnight.
- Unauthorised absence averages 2.5% of half-days at primary level but nearly doubles to 4.6% at post-primary.
- School-level attendance for around 1,000 NI schools is now published on every School Atlas profile, alongside England, Scotland and Wales.
Northern Ireland publishes some of the most detailed school attendance data in the UK — but until now, parents have mostly seen it as a single headline: the Department of Education’s official statistics (published by NISRA) showing overall attendance reached 92.1% in 2024/25, up 0.4 percentage points on the year before. That average hides enormous variation between schools. We have now ingested the Department’s school-level tables for every grant-aided primary, post-primary and special school, so you can see exactly where any school sits — and how that has changed year on year.
The phase gap is the story
Attendance in Northern Ireland, as everywhere in the UK, drops sharply at the move to post-primary. The average primary school recorded 94.0% attendance in 2024/25; the average post-primary school 89.8%. (Those are school-level averages — every school counted equally. The Department’s pupil-weighted phase rates, which give big schools more weight, are 93.8% and 90.2%.) At the extremes the picture is starker: the strongest primary schools reach above 97%, while the most challenged post-primaries sit below 80% — a level at which the average pupil misses a full day of school every week.
NI school attendance by phase, 2024/25
| Primary | 767 | 94.0% | 93.8% | 81.8% – 97.2% | 2.5% / 2.7% |
| Post-primary | 190 | 89.8% | 90.2% | 77.5% – 96.3% | 4.6% / 4.3% |
| Special | 40 | 87.0% | 87.6% | 73.8% – 92.3% | 5.0% / 4.6% |
- Primary
- 767
- Post-primary
- 190
- Special
- 40
- Primary
- 94.0%
- Post-primary
- 89.8%
- Special
- 87.0%
- Primary
- 93.8%
- Post-primary
- 90.2%
- Special
- 87.6%
- Primary
- 81.8% – 97.2%
- Post-primary
- 77.5% – 96.3%
- Special
- 73.8% – 92.3%
- Primary
- 2.5% / 2.7%
- Post-primary
- 4.6% / 4.3%
- Special
- 5.0% / 4.6%
School-level figures are unweighted averages computed from the DE NI Schools-Level attendance tables (every school counts equally); official rates are the Department’s pupil-weighted phase figures from the same release. The pupil-weighted overall figure is 92.1%.
Authorised vs unauthorised: two different signals
The split matters. Authorised absence — illness, medical appointments, agreed leave — tells you about the health profile of a school community. Unauthorised absence is the sharper signal for parents: it captures term-time holidays, truancy and absences the school did not accept. At primary level unauthorised absence averages 2.5% of half-days across schools (the pupil-weighted rate is 2.7%); at post-primary the school-level average climbs to 4.6% (pupil-weighted: 4.3%), and in 22 schools it exceeds 10% — meaning unauthorised absence alone accounts for more than a session a week for the average pupil.
How NI compares with the rest of the UK
On the official cross-nation comparison for primary schools, Northern Ireland’s absence rate of 6.2% in 2024/25 sits below Wales (7.4%) and Scotland (6.9%), though above England (5.2%). School Atlas now carries school-level attendance for all four nations — England’s absence rates, Scotland’s gov.scot attendance workbook, Wales’s MyLocalSchool figures and now NI — so families comparing schools across a border, or relocating into Northern Ireland, can put any school’s figure in its proper national context.
What should parents actually look for?
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