UTCN Attendance Success

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9th Jul 2026

The Department for Education ranks UTCN 1st out of 21 similar schools for attendance! Not only are we beating the national and local averages, but our students are outperforming their peers every single day of the week—proving that UTCN is a place students truly want to be.

 

Here are the key headline facts and major "shout-about" achievements for University Technical College Norfolk (UTCN) from the Department for Education's Summer 2026 report:

Top of the Leaderboard

  • Ranked 1st for Overall Attendance: UTCN ranks 1st out of 21 similar schools in its comparison group.

  • Ranked 1st for Lowest Persistent Absence: UTCN secured the top spot (1st out of 21) for having the lowest rate of persistent absence among its peers.

  • Flawless Evaluation: The DfE report states there are zero "areas to focus on" because UTCN’s attendance is consistently higher than similar schools across the board.

Crushing the Averages (Overall Attendance)

  • UTCN Overall Attendance: 95%.

  • 5.1% higher than the median attendance of similar schools (89.9%).

  • 3.3% higher than the National Secondary Average (91.7%).

  • 3.8% higher than the Local Authority Secondary Average (91.2%).

  • UTCN has even surpassed its own pre-pandemic attendance level of 93.9%.

Smashed Persistent Absence Rates

  • UTCN Persistent Absence: 11.2%.

  • 16.1% lower than the median persistent absence rate of similar schools (27.3%).

Unbeatable Morning Attendance

UTCN beat out all 20 similar schools for attendance on the hardest mornings of the week:

  • Monday mornings: 95.7% (Higher than 20/20 similar schools).

  • Tuesday mornings: 94.9% (Higher than 20/20 similar schools).

  • Wednesday mornings: 94.5% (Higher than 20/20 similar schools).

Supporting Every Pupil Group

UTCN outperforms the peer-school median across every single demographic tracked:

  • Free School Meals (FSM) Pupils: 92.1% at UTCN vs. 84.8% peer average.

  • Special Educational Needs (SEN) Pupils: 93.9% at UTCN vs. 86.1% peer average. (UTCN's SEN attendance also jumped significantly from 92% last year).

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