MEMBERS of Neath Port Talbot Council have been updated on the half-year attendance figures for schools across the borough with a slight dip in numbers recorded.
Council bosses were given the details at an education scrutiny committee held in March with officers noting there had been a slight decrease in pupil attendance by the end of February.
Speaking at the meeting they said this could be “directly attributed” to what was described as a bad winter flu season which led to a number of pupils and staff being off.
They added this picture had been replicated right across Wales, though highlighted that in terms of Neath Port Talbot it was after five years of successive improvement with attendance rates.
The report said: “This slight decrease comes on the back of five successive years of attendance improvements since the start of the pandemic and is almost wholly attributable to a higher-than-normal rate of illness that swept through several of our schools at the very beginning of the winter period.
“Influenza, high temperatures, and sickness were main causes amongst pupils, and some staff, and in several cases several pupils were
admitted to hospital.”
The primary attendance rate for the academic year to February 28, 2026, was 91.98% while secondary attendance rate was 88.38%.
This meant primary schools saw a decrease of 0.29% while secondary schools fell by 0.59% when compared to the previous academic year.
Elsewhere in the meeting members were also given a half-yearly update on the exclusion data for the borough’s schools up to February 28, 2026, where a slight reduction in exclusions had been seen.
The report said: “To end of February 2026, academic year 2025-26, the number of pupils given a fixed exclusion was 469.
“This is a reduction of 10 pupils for the same time period in 2024-25 academic year and the fourth consecutive year reduction in a row.
“However, the number of pupils excluded remains high and is likely to remain higher than when 545 pupils were given a fixed exclusion in 2018-19 (last full year pre-Covid).”
