Best Practice

Getting attendance right: Eight things schools can do this term

Attendance Senior leadership Whole-school issues Legislation and guidance
Attendance is everyone’s responsibility according to the recent statutory guidance and it continues to be a core focus for schools this year. Headteacher Josephine Smith provides a practical eight-point ‘to-do’ list for the months ahead
Image: Adobe Stock

In his article for SecEd at the beginning of this term, headteacher Neil Renton suggested that getting “your attendance spaghetti ready” was a key leadership priority this autumn and challenged us all as school leaders to ask ourselves: “What do you need to do to start the term with the highest levels of attendance?”

He described a headteacher whose approach to attendance last year was simple – “from the beginning in September, we threw everything at it, like spaghetti at the wall, and hoped it stuck”. The leadership method wasn’t about sophistication, but about “timing, application, and focus from the very start”.

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