This article critically evaluates the most important data set on teacher absence in sub-Saharan Africa, namely the World Bank's national education service delivery indicator school surveys which have been conducted in 10 countries during the last decade. The three main conclusions of this review are (1) the very high levels of teacher absenteeism reported in these surveys are, for a variety of reasons, overestimated; (2) the reporting and interpretation of the survey findings have been misleading and incorrect; and (3) the failure to contextualise properly teacher absence leads to shortcomings in the proposed interventions for addressing this problem.