Schools across the country continue to grapple with stubbornly high absence rates in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The challenge is especially acute in secondary schools where, in 2024-25, the average absence rate was 8.4 per cent, up from 5.5 per cent in 2018-19. Improving pupils鈥� sense of 鈥渂elonging鈥� in school has recently emerged as a promising lever for improving attendance, because it is something which schools can meaningfully influence. Reflecting this, the recent schools white paper set an expectation that all schools should measure pupils鈥� sense of school belonging by 2029. There is clear room for improvement. Pupils in England are much less likely to report feeling that they belong at school compared with their peers in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. In the 2022 programme for international student assessment (PISA), only 63 per cent of pupils in England reported feeling that they belonged at their school, compared with an OECD average of 75 per cent. But how far can strengthening pupils鈥� sense of school belonging really go in tackling the attendance crisis? What we did Last week, NFER published a new report exploring this question using PISA 2022 data linked to the national pupil database (NPD). We used statistical techniques to examine the relationships between school belonging, life satisfaction and attendance. In PISA 2022, sense of school belonging was measured based on pupils鈥� responses to six statements, rated on a four-point scale (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree). These included: 鈥淚 make friends easily at school鈥�, 鈥淚 feel I belong at school鈥�, 鈥淥ther students seem to like me鈥�, 鈥淚 feel like an outsider at school鈥� and 鈥淚 feel lonely at school鈥�. Meanwhile, life satisfaction was measured on a scale of 0 (not at all satisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied). What we found Our analysis shows that pupils who felt a strong sense of school belonging were less likely to be absent from school. On average, pupils who reported a very low sense of school belonging had an absence rate of 8.9 per cent, compared with 6.4 per cent for pupils with a very high sense of school belonging. However, the relationship between pupils鈥� sense of school belonging and school attendance was less pronounced where pupils already had a higher sense of school belonging, meaning that additional improvements in school belonging were associated with smaller improvements in attendance. Our statistical analysis also identified a negative association between sense of school belonging and school absences. However, once we included life satisfaction in our modelling, this association was not sustained. This suggests that school belonging may contribute to improved attendance indirectly, through its influence on pupils鈥� overall life satisfaction. This is consistent with research which has shown that sense of school belonging is linked to pupils’ happiness and mental health. While higher levels of life satisfaction were associated with lower school absence, the effect sizes were modest. This suggests that sizeable improvements in pupil life satisfaction would be needed to result in meaningful improvements in attendance. It also indicates that there are likely to be other factors (including factors that may be outside of schools鈥� influence) which are more important for driving improvements in attendance. It is worth noting that our analysis is associational rather than causal. This means it is not possible to determine the direction of the associations identified 鈥� in other words, whether higher life satisfaction leads to lower absence, or whether lower absence levels contribute to higher life satisfaction among pupils. What needs to happen Our results highlight that government strategies to improve attendance need to broaden their focus beyond school belonging, as improving school belonging alone is unlikely to deliver a step change in attendance levels. Government policies should also incorporate the wider factors which influence pupils鈥� life satisfaction, including ensuring timely access to wellbeing and mental health support, offering a balanced school curriculum and providing targeted support for socio-economically disadvantaged pupils and their families. Our results also suggest a need for the government to consider actions that can be taken outside schools to support attendance. For example, via wider public services or cross-departmental government initiatives.