We have read so much about school attendance over the last 18 months and I don’t think I need to revisit here the current state of the national absence figures that schools, especially secondary schools, are fighting so hard to improve.
A National Crisis. The Covid Legacy. Things will never be the same again. The think-tanks. The change in attitudes towards education and school. Gloom. Doom. Challenge. Challenge.
I lead attendance in an all-boys setting on the outskirts of Manchester. The “forgotten” sleeping satellite district of Tameside.
Some could argue that this adds to the woe. I would argue these are the same challenges that we all face. Socio-economic, deprivation and the all-too-well documented changing views about the importance of school attendance.
What am I getting at? First, it would be an easy task to write 1,500 words on how tough we have it. Second, I wouldn’t be writing anything that we don’t know and that we don’t agree with.
So I think our time is better spent talking about what we are doing, what we are going to do, and what is working.
The policy and policy communication
The importance of your attendance policy should not be overlooked. This shouldn’t be a closed document that sits on a website; a document some forlorn assistant head blows the dust off once a year for a governor’s update. Where does it live? And is it lived?
The communication of this document is vital. Everyone should know where it lives, what is in it, what it looks like in action, and how they can and should contribute to its aims.
Practical ways to ensure this involve dedicated CPD time for staff, with colleagues being asked to sign off that they have read it. Parents too should be asked to sign off on the policy.
Accessibility is key. The document is intended to make a difference it must be accessible to its intended audience – to your parents in your context.
Be sure to communicate what will happen with their son or daughter when attendance is going well. Equally as important, be transparent about the process parents/carers can find themselves in should attendance not be where it needs to be.
It has been suggested that schools should share the NHS “fit for school?” guidance. I would suggest not. Seriously, read it – you’ll never have anyone in school!
Attendance is everyone’s responsibility
How many times have we sat in cold school halls for INSET, listening to the designated safeguarding lead going over the finer points of Keeping children safe in education?
And rightly so – accountability is everything. We are all in it to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our young people.
However, for things to improve in your setting, and indeed nationally, attendance must be given the same status in our institutions.
The links between the two – safeguarding and attendance – are clear and obvious. We all have students who we know are safer in school. We all have students who we think about during the school holidays.
You will have felt that sense of anxiety and even dread we get in the holidays about these students – this comes from us all knowing that children are always safer in our schools. What are they doing over the half-term break? What are they eating? Who is looking out for them?
The key is accountability. In our setting creating a culture of “attendance is everyone’s responsibility” has been key in ensuring well above national average attendance every year.
Everything about the school must encourage attendance and, just as importantly, discourage absence.
The encouragement begins with the curriculum – ensuring challenge, motivation and engagement is high on the agenda. Ensuring that what is happening in classrooms is attractive and worthwhile to your young people – that they can see the purpose.
And then there’s your environment – lots of little things that perhaps go unsaid. First, is the welcome warm? Writing in SecEd’s recent vulnerable learners supplement, Steven Russell, who himself spent a childhood in care, asks us the question: What are your students walking into?
Second, is your building warm? Is it comfortable? Is it clean? Are the edges soft? Are there safe spaces? Are their things to do at social times? What are the toilets like? All of these things are pertinent when planning to improve attendance.
Research has shown that for some of our hardest to reach families, attending education full-time is now seen as a choice rather than a requirement. Indeed, one of those think-tanks I mentioned above suggested last year that Covid had caused a “seismic shift” in parental attitudes to attendance due in part to a “fundamental breakdown” in the relationship between schools and parents (Burtonshaw & Dorrell, 2023).
Leaders would be foolish not to recognise this. As adults, we mostly choose to go to the places we enjoy, that we find peaceful, exciting, picturesque…
I want my students to choose to come to school. This can and should be the starting point for any attendance strategy.
The staff
Some education unions have raised concerns about teaching staff being used to “chase attendance”. This is a big no. I agree. Staff shouldn’t be using their time to follow-up attendance, especially not dealing with the administration behind it all.
In fact, for us, this has been an area where support staff have been strategically deployed. Calls to parents, texts, letters, home visits etc – all of which can be overseen and led by an attendance officer.
This is the norm. However, teachers should be talking about attendance and its importance. In the same way that all staff are responsible for the safeguarding of children, attendance should be on all our minds: “You’re missing a lot of lessons at the moment, is everything okay?” “I’ve noticed that Mondays are tough for you, is there anything I can do to help get you in my lesson?”
I have so many successful case studies in my school and these successful outcomes have started from these small conversations between lesson 1 and 2 or as a student is queueing for his Friday lunch. The selling of attendance by staff is massive – and sometimes for a student, knowing that a teacher has expressed their concern, has missed you in their lesson, or wants you to be there next time can have a huge impact on attitudes.
The parents
In my setting, arguably the toughest barrier to fantastic attendance can be parents and families. Again, we have to be honest with ourselves. So many factors are out of our control. Extreme cases of deprivation, neglect, criminality – we all have this in our school communities. The first and most common barrier that comes to mind, one I am frequently fighting, is trying to turn around parents’ own negative experiences of school and education: “I failed all my exams, and I am fine.”
And we know that their child may well be fine too, probably – but they could also be better than fine, they could also be – just imagine…
Parents need to know where they sit in the policy, they need to know what is required of them, including legally. They need to know what can happen when attendance doesn’t meet requirements.
The DfE’s new national framework will raise the level of fines to £80 from September and introduce a new threshold of missing 10 or more half-days within any 10-week period (see SecEd’s report here) – this is all part of the new statutory attendance guidance coming into force in August (DfE, 2024). It is hard to know what the impact of this will be.
But perhaps it is a moot point as, most importantly, parents need to know that their school is there to support. The flex of penalty fines and the court system is important to have, but schools will still retain some discretion under this new framework, and this will continue to be important.
We must talk to our families. The power of parental voice should not be underestimated in order to put in place bespoke support. This should include whole-school parental voice surveys but also simple one-on-one attendance meetings where we must listen as much as we talk.
Just getting parents in to see the school in operation can be so powerful. Getting them in to see faces, shake hands, to see those soft edges – building relationships and trust.
So when little Jonny says “I ain’t going in today”, parents have the tools to respond: “No, come on, I met Miss last week, your art project is due next week, she showed me your work, it’s great, you can do this.” The art of conversation – simple, quick, cheery, and cheap.
The children
I am lucky enough to lead what I believe to be one of the best attendance teams in the country. An attendance officer, heads of year, pastoral support managers, and form tutors make up the bulk (but not all) of this team.
As a result (according to latest FFT data) my school is 94.3% for whole-school attendance, 3.1% above the national average for all students. We are also 6.1% above national average for disadvantaged students and 10.4% above for students with Education, Health, and Care Plans.
Our attendance team’s persistence, consistence, their excellent record-keeping, their infectious positivity, and passion for education is up there with the best – but more than anything and most importantly they know the children, inside-out.
They know them, their families, they know every absence, what it is about, and what is happening next – or what should happen next.
This is labour intensive at the start for sure. But the stronger the relationships, the easier this work becomes and the hard labour decreases. Why? Because the students begin to come more often to school.
We have always found that student voice is key to boosting attendance. Group interventions for students with similar attendance patterns or barriers to attendance, students supporting students to come into school is powerful, too.
The celebrations
Yes, I’m teaching you to suck eggs – maybe – but the days of the 100% attendance mountain bike raffle ticket draw should be well behind us. We just aren’t there anymore. It is not fair. Was it ever?
So what should we be rewarding now? This debate could go on forever. For me, it needs to be “improvement”. And rewarding can be layered and multi-levelled – my advice with any strategy is do not let children feel left out. That feeling itself is a contributing factor to poor attendance.
Everyone loves a certificate, and 100% attendance should be celebrated, but so should 99% and a funeral, and 95% and a broken leg, or the student who has gone from 50% to 70% in one term. We have found that the key is thinking about what to reward where and in front of whom.
Staff need rewards too – this can’t be forgotten. You won’t get the attendance wins without the hard work of staff. So everyone should be celebrating this.
Attendance is everyone’s responsibility so everyone should celebrate it when the wins come in. They are there. We can find them together.
- Jimmy Watt is assistant principal for behaviour and attitudes at Audenshaw School in Manchester.
Further information & resources
- Burtonshaw & Dorrell: Listening to, and learning from, parents in the attendance crisis, Public First, 2023: http://tinyurl.com/2p9zjp6z
- DfE: Guidance: Working together to improve school attendance, 2024: www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance