Three Greater Manchester schools rank among England's worst for unauthorised absence, according to newly published Department for Education figures. Buile Hill Academy in Salford, Denton Community Academy in Tameside and Dixons Brooklands Academy in Wythenshawe all feature in the bottom 20 for attendance during the autumn and spring terms of 2025/26.
Buile Hill Academy sits sixth on the national list with an unauthorised absence rate of 11%, while Denton Community Academy is 16th with a rate of 10.3% and Dixons Brooklands Academy is joint 20th with a rate of 9.9%.
National absence rates remain double pre-pandemic levels
Across all state-funded secondary schools in England, unauthorised absences made up around 2.9% of all school sessions in the autumn and spring term 2025/26 - equating to nearly 12 million school days missed. While around 1.1 million days were lost to term-time holidays and lateness, the vast majority - 9.3 million - were due to 'other' reasons, such as family birthdays, shopping trips, car trouble, or truanting without parents' knowledge.
Despite some improvement over the last couple of years, the rate of unauthorised absence is still around twice as high as before the pandemic, and attendance has never returned to pre-Covid levels.
Best and worst performing schools
At the other end of the scale, Loreto Grammar School in Trafford has the third-best attendance record in England, with an unauthorised absence rate of just 0.2%. Nationally, Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary School in Lambeth was the only school in the country to see almost no schooling missed for unauthorised reasons, at just 0.03%.
The highest rate in England was at Co-op Academy in Leeds, at 14.4% - nearly five times the national average - followed by Leeds East Academy (12.3%), The Basildon Upper Academy in Essex (11.5%), Fir Vale Academy in Sheffield (11.4%) and Notre Dame Catholic Academy in Liverpool (11.1%).
Improvement at Greater Manchester's worst schools
Both Buile Hill Academy and Denton Community Academy are run by the Northern Education Trust, which includes 13 primary academies and 17 secondary academies across the North of England. While both are in the list of worst 20 in England, attendance and attainment are improving.
A year ago, Denton Community Academy was reported to be one of the most improved schools in the borough after turning itself around from the special measures it was placed in as Denton Community College in 2022, when a snap Ofsted visit found it to be failing in every area. Leaders at the trust hailed its transformation as 'nothing short of remarkable', and a more recent Ofsted monitoring inspection praised a 'calm and purposeful' environment.
Results and attendance are improving at Buile Hill too, with the proportion of students achieving grade 5+ in English and maths GCSEs surging from around 16% in 2024 to nearly 50% in 2025. Overall attainment has strengthened, with English and maths 4+ increasing from 33% to 65.1% and 5+ rising from 16.8% to 49.4%.
Absence widens disadvantage gap
Research from the Education Policy Institute (EPI) shows that the growing attainment gap among 16-year-olds since 2019 has been entirely driven by higher absence rates among students on free school meals (FSM), leaving them months behind their peers. Nationally, secondary school pupils on FSM missed more than three times as much school for unauthorised reasons as those not eligible for the scheme last autumn and spring - 6%, compared to 1.7%.
The Manchester Evening News has approached Northern Education Trust and Dixons Brooklands Academy for comment.
