Expectations for your school(s)
It's worth knowing what the Department for Education (DfE) expects of your school(s), as improving attendance is likely to be a strategic priority for most schools for the foreseeable future. You'll need to be involved in monitoring your school's progress and policies.
Most of these expectations are very operational and will be handled by your school/trust leaders. They're also likely to already be in place.
Build relationships with families, understand barriers to attendance and work together to remove them
Develop a whole-school culture that promotes the benefits of high attendance
Have a school attendance policy
Accurately complete attendance registers and have day-to-day processes to follow up absence
Monitor and regularly analyse data to identify pupils who need support
Share information and work collaboratively with others
Provide additional support for pupils with ill-health or SEND
Pay particular attention to persistently and severely absent pupils
Your board's role
The rest of this article summarises chapter 3 of working together to improve school attendance. This outlines what's expected of the board of trustees in academies and the governing board of maintained schools when it comes to improving attendance.
If you’re on a local governing body (LGB), check your scheme of delegation to see what specific responsibilities you have around attendance.
1. Recognise the importance of school attendance and promote it across the school's ethos and policies
This means you should:
- Set high expectations for all leaders, staff, pupils and parents/carers
- Recognise that absence is a symptom and that improving pupils' attendance is part of improving their overall welfare
- Make sure school leaders prioritise attendance as part of wider strategies – e.g. for attainment, behaviour, special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), wellbeing and safeguarding
- You might have an attendance link governor to focus on this
- Make sure your school has effective attendance management processes, and that these provide consistent support for the pupils that need it by prioritising staff and resources
- This includes making sure your school engages with wider local partners and services, e.g. the LA school attendance support team
- Make sure your school maintains high attendance aspirations for all pupils, but that it adapts support to pupils’ individual needs – e.g. pupils:
- With long-term illnesses
- With SEND
- With a social worker
- From cohorts with historically lower attendance, e.g. those eligible for free school meals
- Continually evaluate how effective your school’s processes and improvement efforts are, so you can make sure they’re meeting pupils’ needs as barriers to attendance develop
- Identify and monitor attendance patterns across your schools to identify common issues, barriers and to share effective practice
- Liaise with the DfE’s regional teams for advice about wider support programmes (if this would be helpful)
- Larger trusts: have a dedicated attendance lead and/or central attendance staff who can:
- Drive attendance improvement across the trust
- Work more intensively with schools
- Act as a central point of contact
How you can do this
Questions to ask leaders
2. Make sure your school leaders fulfil expectations and statutory duties
As the proprietor of a school, your trust or maintained school board is ultimately responsible for ensuring due regard and compliance with the law on school attendance.
Make sure your school:
- Has an attendance policy which meets the DfE’s expectations and is easily accessible to pupils, parents/carers and staff
- MATs and federations – your senior leaders may choose to have 1 attendance policy which covers all of your schools, but the policy should then be tailored to each school
- Records attendance accurately in the register, and shares the required information with the DfE and LAs
- Works effectively with local partners to remove barriers to attendance that go beyond the school gates, including building strong links with local services (e.g. social care, health and police) and the voluntary and community sector
How you can do this
Questions to ask
3. Regularly review attendance data and help leaders focus improvement efforts on pupils who need it
Discuss and challenge trends with your senior leaders by:
- Regularly reviewing attendance data at board meetings (including looking at trends and benchmarking with other schools)
- Looking specifically at pupil cohorts that have had poor attendance historically, or face entrenched barriers to attendance, e.g. pupils:
- With a social worker
- From a background/ethnicity where attendance has been low
- With a long-term medical condition
- With SEND
- Who are eligible for free school meals
If your school/trust is struggling with attendance, work with your senior leaders to develop an attendance action plan and review it regularly.
MATs and federations, you might also want to:
- Have termly attendance review meetings with each school, and/or
- Ask each school to report on their attendance at specific points
How you can do this
Questions to ask
4. Make sure school staff receive adequate training on attendance
Make sure your school:
- Includes attendance training in its continued professional development (CPD) offer for all staff, and that it’s covered in trust/federation-wide induction packs. This should cover the:
- Importance of good attendance, and that absence is usually a symptom of wider circumstances
- Law and requirements on keeping registers
- School/trust strategies and procedures for tracking, following up and improving attendance
- Processes for working with other partners to provide more support
- Provides dedicated attendance training to staff with a specified attendance function in their role (e.g. senior leaders, pastoral or family support staff). It should cover:
- The necessary skills to interpret and analyse attendance data
- Additional training that would help to support pupils/pupil cohorts overcome common barriers to attendance
How you can do this
Questions to ask
5. For MATs and federations: share effective practice across your schools
If you're in a MAT or federation, the DfE expects you to provide regular opportunities to bring staff together from different schools to learn from each other’s expertise and share effective interventions.
Your leaders should tailor this to your school’s and pupils' needs – but as a minimum, it could include:
- Sharing exemplar resources and documents (e.g. communications to pupils and parents/carers)
- Regular networking or Q&A sessions
- Topical best-practice training or webinars
Your LA is also expected to provide opportunities for schools within a geographical area to come together and share good practice.
How you can do this
Questions to ask
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