FACT CHECK
Two newspapers get numbers seriously wrong
An article published by The Sun on 27 June claims that 100,000 pupils have failed to return to school full-time despite classrooms reopening.
This claim is based on a report produced by the Centre for Social Justice, which states that during September to December 2020, 93,514 pupils in England were severely absent, which means they missed school more often than they attended. This does not include pupils who missed lessons directly due to Covid-19, for example, school bubble closures.
The Sun fails to point out in the headline and the first five paragraphs of the article that this figure applies to attendance in September to December 2020, and is not reflective of current school attendance rates.
Separately, the Telegraph claimed “748.6 people per 100,000” in England died in May. But this is the annualised, not monthly, death rate for May. This means that if May’s death rate applied across the whole year, there would be 748.6 deaths per 100,000 people over the course of the year. But it is wrong to say that this proportion of people who did die during that month.
If 748.6 people per 100,000 died each month, on average, then around 9% of the country would die every year. In reality, about 1% of the population of England dies each year.
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