Regular school attendance is associated with student academic achievement, while chronic absenteeism is a growing problem negatively associated with academic and socioemotional outcomes. While research has documented the significant influence of family socioeconomic conditions on student attendance, there is little empirical evidence documenting…

Using newly released detailed data on absence from school, we find a 'Friday effect'--children are much less likely to attend schools in England on Fridays. We use daily level data across the whole of England and find that this pattern holds for different schools and for different types of absence, including illness-related authorised and…

Student absenteeism surged during and after the pandemic, harming engagement and achievement. We evaluate the impact of Washington DC's High-Impact Tutoring (HIT) Initiative--designed to mitigate learning loss through targeted academic supports--on student absenteeism. Using daily attendance data and a within-student fixed effects design, we find…

This position paper proposes a revisiting of the academic calendar for Ghanaian basic schools, emphasising the need to extend the first-trimester vacation period to better align with sociocultural, economic, and environmental realities. The current first vacation, which runs from late December to early January, overlaps with festive events,…