School attendance up in clampdown on 'sicknote culture' "Some parents think they're being a good parent by keeping their child off school, but actually sometimes they can be a bit trigger happy, particularly with young parents and young children," he said. The figures show attendance records for almost 6.3 million pupils in state primary and secondary schools in England during the autumn and spring terms last year. It emerged that five per cent of lesson time was lost due to absences - the equivalent of 314,000 missing school every day. But this was down from 5.8 per cent - more than 363,500 - a year earlier. The truancy rate - when pupils miss school without notifying teachers at all - stood at 0.9 per cent, down from one per cent in 2010/11. It was equivalent to around 56,500 pupils skipping school without permission each day. A report on the figures said that there were a number of factors for this, including a decrease in absence for illness reasons. "Figures from the Health Protection Agency show substantially lower levels of flu-like illness around autumn 2011 than in previous years," it said. Similarly, the proportion of calls to NHS Direct relating to colds/flu and fever was very low last winter compared with the previous year. This may explain some of the decrease in absence through illness. It added: "Eid fell out of term time, which may explain some of the relatively large fall in absence for religious observance."