Tackling absence is top of the to-do list for secondary schools, not least as part of our safeguarding work, as it is often our most vulnerable students who have poor attendance. Elizabeth Rose offers some practical advice and ideas


Attendance has always been a significant issue for schools. From a school perspective, children need to be present in order to learn and make progress and we have a clear responsibility to ensure that children on roll are regularly attending.

Everything was turned on its head during the pandemic. Suddenly schools were asking the vast majority of children to stay at home.
Anecdotal feedback from the schools I work with shows that following this upturn in expectation, school attendance has been unable to recover. This sentiment is supported by national school attendance data.

Secondary students missed more than 9% of classroom time during the autumn term 2022, compared with an average of about 5.4% pre-pandemic. As of January, the absence rate across the academic year to date in all schools was 7.8% (DfE, 2023).

It is important for both individual schools and groups of schools in similar locations to consider together what some of the reasons are for this increasingly entrenched drop in overall attendance.

Local factors will play a part, but there are also themes emerging nationally. The on-going circulation of Covid is no doubt playing a part – as well as infection relating to Strep A and parental fears surrounding this. Other illnesses, issues with student and parental mental health, the cost of living crisis, pressures on health services, and a potential shift in attitudes towards attendance are making it hard to get back to the status quo.

These wider statistics are useful for understanding the sweeping barriers and some of the national issues that will not only be affecting attendance but vulnerability, safeguarding, access to services, and health, too.

And yet we come back to the fact that there are vulnerable children who should be in school, and there are children who are becoming increasingly vulnerable because they are not in school.

The data on this issue is clear – children with better attendance have higher attainment (DfE, 2022a) and this means that children have access to wider and better life chances later on. Additionally, when looking at the most vulnerable children, there are associations between poor attendance and extra-familial harm (MoJ/DfE, 2019).

In order to ensure schools are responding to this issue and to provide additional guidance around it, the DfE published the non-statutory guidance document Working together to improve school attendance in May (DfE, 2022b). Although currently non-statutory, the DfE has committed to this guidance becoming statutory when Parliamentary time allows (although no sooner that September 2023).

This guidance is extremely detailed and there is a clear emphasis throughout on personalised responses to attendance barriers and the adaptations and support that schools could put in place to address individual issues with attendance and to support vulnerable children.


Vulnerable Learners Supplement: Free download

This article is one of many to feature in SecEd’s March 2023 vulnerable learners supplement. The free 18-page download focuses on boosting attendance for vulnerable students as well as tackling the impact of poverty and other issues. It includes practical advice from colleagues working in our schools as well as three case studies of how schools are supporting their students. Published in March 2023, you can download the supplement in pdf format here.

What does the guidance say?

The guidance is clear on the overarching responsibilities of schools:

  • Develop and maintain a whole school culture that promotes the benefits of high attendance.
  • Have a clear school attendance policy that is accessible to everyone.
  • Keep accurate records of attendance and analyse attendance data.
  • Build strong relationships with families, listen to and understand barriers to attendance, and work with families to remove them.
  • Share information and work collaboratively with other schools in the area, local authorities, and other partners.

There is an emphasis that good attendance is learned and poor attendance is habitual, that schools should have high expectations of all children and a strong sense that schools should work to remove barriers where attendance is becoming poor – including “considering support or reasonable adjustments for uniform, transport, routines, access to support in school and lunchtime arrangements”.

This is a safeguarding-first approach – looking at the individual child, considering what the issues could be, and working together to overcome them.


Is poor attendance a safeguarding issue?

Attendance and safeguarding are inextricably linked. School should be a protective factor for children and, ultimately, if we do not know where children are and we aren’t seeing them regularly we are unable to provide additional support if necessary.

The attendance policy should have clear links to the safeguarding policy and as Keeping children safe in education (DfE, 2022c) makes clear, safeguarding should be part of all areas of school life.

Staff should understand that children with poor attendance may be more vulnerable, they need to know that poor attendance could be a sign of abuse or harm and all staff should be provided with the school procedures in relation to children missing education (DfE, 2016) at induction – as stipulated in KCSIE.

Very poor attendance may be a child protection issue in its own right – when it becomes “educational neglect” – and is included in threshold documents in some local authorities. Attendance is discussed at early help meetings, child protection conferences and core group meetings.

However, this does not mean that all children with poor attendance are being abused and it does not mean that children who are being abused always have poor attendance.

From a school perspective, poor attendance is a safeguarding issue because ultimately it is about considering all of the factors to help and support a child to be in a place where they will be able to flourish, develop and make progress, putting in place interventions or seeking external help when necessary.


What can schools do?

So, how can schools support vulnerable children to improve their attendance?

  • There are many reasons why vulnerable children may have poor attendance and knowing children well and listening to their voice is the most effective way to establish how to support and safeguard them.
  • Look at your system of rewards and incentives for all children. Do these exclude children who will struggle to be present every day, such as young carers, children with medical needs, or those struggling with behaviour? Ensure that your systems are inclusive and support improvement rather than “100% attendance” to encourage everyone in the school community.
  • Consider each child on a case-by-case basis and what the barriers might be. Think holistically about the child and what the barriers are to their attendance as a team – including how school could be adapted to better suit the needs of the child.
  • Decide if your severely absent children are vulnerable because of their attendance. What risks are they more likely to face? How can you work with local services to mitigate this risk?
  • Discuss with them what their life is like in-school to understand what the barriers may be and then work to address them.
  • Ensure that you have robust procedures and training for staff in place around child-on-child abuse and behaviour management to make sure that school is a safe place for every child.
  • Consider who children’s “trusted adults” are. Could a member of staff mentor a child with poor attendance? Could they meet them at the school gate and take them to breakfast club?
  • Ensure that behaviour approaches and approaches to attendance are carefully delineated. If a child has pastoral, SEND, safeguarding or mental health issues or needs that are barriers to attending school then it is unlikely that a system of sanctions will encourage good attendance.
  • Make referrals as appropriate for mental health support and work with partners to secure support for children with SEND, as often these issues will be the barrier to good attendance.
  • Support parents. Discuss with them what the barriers are and how to work together to overcome them. Again, punitive approaches may not encourage a child to attend school when there are vulnerabilities and issues that need to be resolved.
  • If things are not working or are not improving, revisit the plan and think creatively – using the ideas of the child and parents to help. Involve partners where necessary – SEND, early help or making referrals to social care if you think a child is suffering or is at risk of suffering significant harm.


Ready for statutory guidance?

What should schools consider putting in place before guidance becomes statutory?

  • Establish a designated senior leader with overall responsibility for championing and improving attendance in school. This person should work with the designated safeguarding lead to share important information and develop strategies to engage and support vulnerable children.
  • It is likely that you will have attendance data monitoring in place, but the new guidance states that this should include, “thorough analysis of half-termly, termly, and full year data to identify patterns and trends. This should include analysis of students and cohorts and identifying patterns in uses of certain codes, days of poor attendance and, where appropriate, subjects which have low lesson attendance”.
  • This data should be “benchmarked (at whole school, year group and cohort level) against local, regional, and national levels to identify areas of focus for improvement”.
  • Consider how you need to adapt or extend staff training in relation to attendance.
  • Review your communication with parents around attendance and how this can be further strengthened or adapted.
  • Review your attendance policy using the new guidance.


Final thought

The issue of attendance and vulnerability is a difficult one – it is multi-faceted and factors contributing to both are often complicated and overlap.

Schools are one agency out of many that need to work together to ensure that children are in school and it cannot just be a school responsibility when vulnerable children have poor attendance.

It is likely to take some time to recover from the pandemic in many ways, but by knowing children well and working with them individually, as well as establishing and maintaining a robust and inclusive approach to attendance across the board, we will hopefully see a cultural shift and decreasing numbers of children out of school.


Further information & resources