School improvement conversations usually start with familiar themes: teaching quality, curriculum design, assessment, behaviour, or parental engagement. Yet one of the most powerful and consistently overlooked drivers of exam performance is far more basic.
Attendance.
Over the last five years, research from the UK, Bangladesh, and across the world has shown the same pattern: students who attend regularly perform significantly better in exams – GCSE, SSC, HSC, and beyond.
But this is not only a story about students. It is a story about school leadership. Attendance is not a pastoral footnote or an administrative duty. It is a system-level issue that senior leaders must lead, monitor, and intervene on with urgency – because every day absent is a day of learning lost, and exam outcomes move with attendance more predictably than almost any other factor schools measure.
Why Attendance Matters More Than We Think
The data is unequivocal. Across very different education systems, attendance and achievement are tightly linked.
Students with less than 1% absence in Years 10–11 achieve an average Progress 8 score well above national expectations. Those who miss half of all sessions have Progress 8 scores so low that they effectively fail several more GCSE subjects than expected.
Crucially, outcomes do not only collapse at extreme levels. Missing around 10% of schooling – the threshold for persistent absence – is roughly the point where exam performance shifts from above average to below average.
In Bangladesh, the story is even more stark. Hundreds of thousands of young people simply never make it to the exam hall. In recent years, about a third of secondary-age students have dropped out before reaching the SSC exam. In 2025 alone, over 425,000 HSC candidates did not even register for the exam.
On top of this, tens of thousands of registered candidates are absent on day one of SSC exams, and many never sit all their papers. For these students, poor attendance is not a minor issue. It is the moment their educational journey effectively ends.
Global evidence tells the same story. Meta-analyses and large-scale studies show that every type of absence – excused, unexcused, or due to suspension – has a negative impact on academic performance. Even one additional missed day has a measurable effect on test scores. When absence becomes chronic, the academic damage is severe.
The lesson is simple but profound: you cannot improve exam results if large numbers of students are not present to learn and to sit the exams.
Attendance Is Not a Student Problem – It Is a Leadership Priority
Schools often view attendance through the wrong lens:
- This student is disengaged.
- Parents are not supportive.
- They do not value education.
These explanations may contain elements of truth, but they rarely tell the whole story. Behind the patterns of absence are deeper forces: structural inequalities, socio-economic pressures, health and mental health challenges, unsafe routes to school, child marriage, labour demands, and students who feel too far behind to continue.
That is why the key leadership question is not “Why do some students not attend?” It is:
“What systems are in place to ensure we notice, respond, and support early enough?”
Attendance is a strategic leadership domain because:
- It is predictable – patterns emerge weeks and months in advance.
- It is measurable – data is available daily, class by class.
- It is preventable – when schools intervene early and intelligently.
- It responds to leadership actions – culture, systems, and expectations matter.
Exam success cannot be separated from attendance. Teaching quality only matters if students are present to experience it.
Five High-Leverage Actions School Leaders Can Take Now
The following actions are intentionally low-cost, sustainable, and aligned with the EBTD approach to leadership and improvement in Bangladesh. They are designed for principals, vice principals, and senior leadership teams working in real schools, with real constraints.
Build a Weekly Attendance Dashboard
Move beyond termly reports and end-of-year surprises. Leaders need a simple, visual dashboard that shows weekly patterns by:
- Year group or class
- Gender and key vulnerable groups
- Students hovering at 92–95 percent attendance
Patterns reveal stories. Stories reveal interventions. When leaders see attendance weekly, they can act while there is still time to recover learning.
Use the “Three-Week Rule” for Early Intervention
Chronic absenteeism is almost always preceded by three or four weeks of small dips. Establish a simple rule for your leadership team:
If attendance for any student declines for three consecutive weeks, an intervention is triggered.
That intervention might include:
- A supportive phone call home
- An attendance mentoring meeting with a trusted adult
- An academic check-in to see whether the student feels behind
- Timetable or workload adjustments for overwhelmed learners
In Bangladesh, it might also involve checking for early signs of financial strain, discussing safety and wellbeing with girls at risk of marriage, or liaising with community leaders. Early intervention is always cheaper than late intervention.
Make Attendance a Leadership Walk, Not Just Teacher Responsibility
Class teachers and attendance officers cannot carry this work alone. School leaders have to be visibly involved in attendance.
Build “attendance walks” into your weekly routines:
- Visit classes with historically lower attendance.
- Talk to teachers about patterns they are noticing.
- Identify timetable bottlenecks that drive absence.
- Look closely at days or periods with repeated dips.
When leadership shows that attendance matters, everyone follows. Attendance becomes part of instructional leadership, not just administration.
Diagnose First, Intervene Second
One of the biggest errors schools make is assuming that all absences are the same and can be solved with the same response. The evidence in Bangladesh tells a different story.
For example, a significant proportion of absent female candidates are no longer in school because of early marriage. Other students have been pulled into paid work, or have simply fallen so far behind that they cannot see a path to success.
In other contexts, including the UK, mental health difficulties and post-COVID disengagement are more prominent causes.
Different causes require different solutions. Effective leaders invest time in understanding why students are absent before deciding how to respond.
Use Micro-Interventions Aligned to the EBTD Deliberate Practice Model
Small, consistent actions outperform large, inconsistent ones. This mirrors the EBTD Deliberate Practice Model for improving teaching and leadership.
Leaders can build simple, sustainable habits such as:
- Daily SMS reminders to families of at-risk students.
- Weekly recognition for improved attendance, not just perfection.
- WhatsApp groups for parents by year group.
- Short “welcome back” routines for returning absentees.
- Brief leadership check-ins with the highest-risk students.
These interventions are low-cost, adaptable to large classes, and aligned with EBTD’s emphasis on small, high-leverage habits that change behaviour over time.
Attendance: The Foundation of Every School Improvement Plan
School leaders cannot control the content of national exams. They cannot control political decisions or the wider economic context. But they can influence:
- How early warning signs are spotted.
- How consistently attendance is monitored.
- The culture of presence among staff and students.
- The quality of support offered to families facing hardship.
- The way attendance is woven into teaching, not separated from it.
The evidence from the UK, Bangladesh, and international studies is clear: improving attendance is one of the fastest, most reliable ways to raise exam performance.
Before debating curriculum reforms, new frameworks, or large-scale training programmes, leaders must ask a simple question:
“Are our students present enough to benefit from everything we offer?”
Attendance is not paperwork. It is not mere compliance. It is not bureaucracy.
Attendance is learning. Attendance is opportunity. Attendance is exam success.
For school leaders, it is the first lever and the strongest lever. Improvement begins with presence.
