--- title: "Jersey school attendance holds steady while Guernsey acts on truancy" url: https://www.nsfw.info/jersey-school-attendance-steady-guernsey-truancy-campaign/ published: 2026-10-22T09:31:11+00:00 modified: 2026-10-22T09:31:11+00:00 author: "Chief Editor" categories: ["News"] image: https://www.nsfw.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/jersey-school-attendance-steady-guernsey-truancy-campaign-1024x572.webp summary: "Jersey's state school attendance sits at 92.9% in 2025/26, while Guernsey and Alderney launch their Attendance Matters campaign to tackle post-lockdown truancy." publisher: NSFW (https://www.nsfw.info) --- # Jersey school attendance holds steady while Guernsey acts on truancy **In brief:** Jersey’s school attendance figures have held broadly steady since the pandemic, with the latest year showing 92.9% across government-run schools. Meanwhile, Guernsey and Alderney have launched a dedicated campaign called “Attendance Matters” after both islands reported attendance sliding as a post-lockdown challenge. ## Jersey Holds Steady While Neighbours Sound the Alarm While Guernsey and Alderney have felt compelled to launch a formal truancy campaign, Jersey appears to be keeping its head above water, at least by the numbers. Figures released by CYPES, the Government of Jersey’s Children, Young People, Education and Skills department, show attendance across government-run schools from reception to Year 11 has remained broadly consistent since the first full academic year after lockdown. The lowest point in the five-year picture came in 2021 to 2022, the first full year back in classrooms, when attendance sat at 91.6%. From there it rose to 93.2% in 2022 to 2023, dipped slightly to 93.0% the following year, peaked at 93.4% in 2024 to 2025, and then eased back to 92.9% in 2025 to 2026. Bailiwick Express reports the overall picture as one of minimal but consistent improvement from that post-lockdown low. It is worth noting what these figures do not cover. The statistics exclude schools that are predominantly privately funded and operated, including Beaulieu Convent School, De La Salle College, Helvetia House School, FCJ Primary School, St George’s Preparatory, St Michael’s Preparatory and St Christopher’s School. The picture painted is therefore one of the state sector only. ## Guernsey and Alderney’s “Attendance Matters” Push Across the water, education leaders in Guernsey and Alderney have taken a more interventionist approach. Their “Attendance Matters” campaign, launched earlier this year, was prompted by what officials described as an increasing challenge since the Covid-19 pandemic, with standards slipping as early as the first week of a new term. The initiative is notably focused on causes rather than consequences. Rather than leading with penalties for persistent absence, it aims to address the underlying reasons pupils are not turning up. Measures include providing families with “Back to School” guidance, clearer signposting to support services, improved training for education and support staff, and stronger partnerships with local health and wellbeing services. One of the more striking elements of the campaign is a simple piece of arithmetic being pushed to parents: if a pupil is 15 minutes late every day, that adds up to two full weeks of lost learning across a school year. It is the kind of statistic that sounds trivial until you do the maths, and then it is rather hard to ignore. ## What It Means for Jersey Families For Jersey parents, the immediate takeaway is reassuring. The island’s figures have not shown the kind of deterioration that has prompted formal campaigns elsewhere. That said, a headline attendance rate of 92.9% still means that, on average, pupils are missing roughly one in every fourteen school days. Whether that is cause for comfort or concern rather depends on your perspective. The contrast with Guernsey and Alderney also raises a quiet question: is Jersey genuinely managing the post-pandemic attendance challenge better, or has the issue simply not yet attracted the same level of official attention? The CYPES figures are a useful baseline, but they cover only part of the island’s school population. For families in Jersey’s independent schools, there are no comparable published figures to draw on, which leaves a portion of the picture in the dark. ## The NSFW Perspective There is something quietly satisfying about Jersey being able to point at a regional trend and say, with some justification, “not our problem, actually.” The post-pandemic attendance crisis has been a genuine headache for education systems across the English-speaking world, so holding a broadly stable line is no small thing. That said, one might gently observe that a peak attendance rate of 93.4%, followed by a slide back to 92.9%, is not exactly cause for a ticker-tape parade. And the exclusion of seven private schools from the data means the full story of Jersey’s classrooms remains, at best, partially told. Perhaps CYPES might consider whether a more complete picture would serve the island’s families better than a partial one, however reassuring the partial one happens to look. As for Guernsey’s campaign, the “15 minutes late equals two weeks lost” calculation deserves to travel. It is the sort of concrete, no-nonsense message that cuts through far more effectively than abstract appeals to the importance of education. Jersey might do worse than borrow it. *Source: [Bailiwick Express](https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/news/jerseys-school-attendance-steady-after-guernsey-launches-attendance-campaign)*