Pupil attendance will be among 10 new performance ratings upon which schools will be judged under plans to be unveiled by Ofsted and Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary.

       The Government announced in September that one-word school ratings which are currently given by Ofsted would be scrapped and replaced with a tougher regime.

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       The move followed the death of Ruth Perry, the headteacher who took her own life after an inspection downgraded her school from “outstanding” to “inadequate”.

       The Telegraph can reveal that the single-word rating will be replaced by a school report card containing 10 separate grades based on “key areas”.

       From next year, schools will also be rated according to how well they instil British values and how they prepare children with the life skills needed for the outside world.

       Other ratings will cover the quality of a school’s curriculum, the teaching provided and the educational attainment of the children.

       The specific focus on attendance comes amid soaring numbers of children playing truant since the pandemic.

       More than one in five children were persistently absent during the 2022/23 school year when they missed at least one day of school each fortnight. Figures for last year are not yet available.

       In an attempt to persuade parents to keep their children in school, fines for unauthorised school absences rose from ￡60 to ￡80 in August, with the fine rising to ￡160 for a second offence.

       But a poll earlier this month found that these fines are failing to deter parents from taking their children on holiday during term time.

       Ms Phillipson will include attendance as one of 10 graded areas in the new score sheet to try and tackle the issue.

       Schools will be required to have clear strategies in place to tackle stubbornly high absence rates since the pandemic.

       While Ofsted currently considers attendance as part of its overall score, inspectors will in future be expected to consider the issue more prominently.

       Following the announcement that one-word school ratings would be cancelled, Sir Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said schools would face increased scrutiny on how they tackle attendance.

       Last month, Ms Phillipson suggested parents were partially to blame for rising absence rates.

       She told The Sunday Times: “Reasons for not being in school do not include cheaper holidays, birthday treats or even a runny nose. Nor do they include unpopular subjects or just not fancying it today. Too many parents think they do.”

       Ms Phillipson promised to “act decisively to put this right with an approach rooted in responsibility”, as she accused the previous government of having “tinkered around the edges”.

       It follows repeated warnings that the unwritten “social contract” that parents should send their children to school broke down during the pandemic.

       Post-pandemic impact

       A survey by Parentkind, a charity supporting parents in education, found that 18 per cent of parents said it was harder to get their child to go to school than before the pandemic, and almost a third said they were “more relaxed” about their child’s school attendance since Covid.

       Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, said last year that a “huge” number of children are playing truant on Fridays as parents work from home.

       She suggested damaging “new attitudes” to schooling have begun to emerge post-Covid, including “a huge amount of Friday absence that wasn’t there before”.

       In addition to the children’s preparedness for the wider world, it is understood that the strength of schools’ curriculum and teaching, as well as how well pupils achieve, will also all be considered individually under the plans.

       The design and content of school report cards will be published for consultation early in the new year.