To ask the Minister of Education whether his Department collects data on the number of children not attending school due to emotionally-based school avoidance.

Pupil absence is recorded by schools through the selection of a code from an agreed list published by my Department. There is not a specific code for emotionally based school avoidance and there are limitations to the existing codes available. It is therefore not possible to produce data on the number of children affected by this condition.

The new school administration system EdiS, is under development. Consequently, we will be reviewing all existing attendance codes and this may result in new codes being created for use in our schools.