ABSENCE rates for `newcomer' schoolchildren are to be included for the first time in official government statistics.
Detailed attendance figures for all schools are published annually by the Department of Education.
These are broken down at present into categories including school management type, free school meal entitlement and gender.
The department is now consulting on proposed changes.
The data are used by members of assembly, the department, the Education Authority and Education and Training Inspectorate for benchmarking, policy making and performance monitoring.
The statistics include information on the rates of absence, type of absence and reason for absence.
The most recent figures, for 2015/16, showed one in 10 primary school absences were due to term time holidays.
Attendance or absence is measured for every pupil in half-day sessions - morning and afternoon.
The overall attendance rate for all schools in 2015/16 was 94.6 per cent of total half days.
The department says it plans now to remove some categories from the annual bulletin "to make it easier for the reader to make comparisons across school types".
Categories for removal include school management type, home language and duration of absence.
Removing management type will mean people will no longer be able to compare the rates of absence between Catholic maintained, state-controlled and integrated schools.
A new category, newcomer children, will be added. The term is used to refer a pupil who does not have satisfactory language skills to participate fully in the school curriculum and does not have a language in common with the teacher.
In recent years, schools in the north have been experiencing a steady growth in their enrolment of children from various parts of the world.
Polish children are the largest newcomer group in primary education with about 2,500 pupils, followed by Lithuanian and Portuguese pupils.
