RISING rates of pupil absences in secondary schools have led to disadvantaged young people falling further behind their peers since the pandemic, a report has suggested.

The growth in the disadvantage gap since 2019, the year before the pandemic, at age 16 can be “entirely explained by higher levels of absence” for disadvantaged pupils, according to today’s report by the Education Policy Institute think tank.

It found that at each stage of schooling, more than half of the gap is explained by the size of the disadvantage gap in earlier phases: by age seven, nearly 60 per cent of the gap at age 11 has already developed.