The Mediating Role of School Absenteeism in the Socioeconomic Achievement Gap

Abstract

Socioeconomic disparities in children's academic achievement are well established, but the underlying mechanisms are less well understood. We test the hypothesis that socioeconomic disparities in children’s achievement in early primary school are partially mediated via school absences. We used linked data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS, birth cohort 2000/01) and the National Pupil Database (NPD) and applied a regression-with-residuals approach to examine the extent to which school absences in school Years 1 and 2 mediate the association between socio-economic status (SES) and achievement at the end of school year 2 in England (N = 8024). Using different achievement measures (reading, writing, math, science, and average) and a broad socioeconomic disadvantage index (based on parental education, occupational class, income, housing tenure, and neighborhood deprivation), we found that a one standard deviation increase in SES is associated with 0.37–0.43 standard deviations higher achievement in early primary school. Accounting for a rich set of mediator-outcome confounders, school attendance significantly explained (6.45–8.10%) the link between the broad socioeconomic disadvantage index and achievement. Similar results are obtained when measuring SES with household income. Additional analyses show that absences in later years mediate the SES-achievement gaps in Years 6 and 11. Our findings suggest that improving attendance will help reduce the SES-achievement gap.