The Education (Pupils' Attendance Records) Regulations 1991

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations make provision as to the recording and publication of information about the attendance of registered pupils by amendment of the Pupils' Registration Regulations 1956 (“the 1956 Regulations”), the Education (Schools Information) Regulations 1981 (“the 1981 Regulations”) and the Education (School Curriculum and Related Information) Regulations 1989 (“the 1989 Regulations”), and by new Regulations made under sections 22 and 103 of the Education Reform Act 1988.

Regulation 2, which amends the 1956 Regulations, applies to all schools (other than independent schools for boarders only). It provides for schools' attendance registers to distinguish between pupils' authorised and unauthorised absence (as defined in the regulation). It permits schools to keep attendance or admission registers by means of a computer, subject to certain safeguards described in the regulation. A further ground for the removal of a name from the admission register—where the pupil has not transferred from a nursery to a reception class—is added.

Regulation 3, which amends the 1981 Regulations, applies to schools maintained by a local education authority and (by virtue of their articles of government) to grantmaintained schools. It provides for the publication in schools' prospectuses of specified information about rates of unauthorised absence; where the prospectus does not contain the information relating to the school year preceding the school year in which the prospectus is published that information must be published as a supplement when it becomes available. Regulation 4 makes similar provision about supplements in the case of grant-maintained schools.

Regulation 5, which amends the 1989 Regulations, provides for the information required to be published by regulations 3 and 4 to be included also in the annual report of the governors of all LEA-maintained and grant-maintained schools.