It is well known that attendance is a major problem in education, and it is something that we at Education South West are sadly very conscious of, with our secondary attendance rates below the national average and our primary attendance broadly at the national average.
However, attendance is something that we have been working actively to tackle, and we are seeing improvements - albeit with plenty left to do.
While we would not claim to have all the answers, hopefully by sharing the steps we have taken to understand the issues, how we have acted and the wider collaboration we are engaged with, we can help others to address this education-wide problem.
School attendance: understanding the issues
The first thing we did was to seek to truly understand the problems so that we could create tailored solutions, rather than carrying on using a one-size-fits-all approach that wasn’t working.
So we approached ImpactEd, an education research group, to help us conduct surveys with pupils and parents on attendance and examine three key areas:
- The importance of attendance.
- The drivers for attendance (including external life factors).
- Assessing wellbeing.
We made it clear to parents why we were doing this to help drive their engagement, and from these responses we gained key insights, including why parents felt non-attendance was sometimes acceptable (such as for family time) and that some of our scores around wellbeing were lower than other schools, which could be impacting attendance.
This research also revealed the importance of ensuring that we have a dedicated focus for students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who have notably lower attendance rates than their less vulnerable peers.
We have made focusing on the students a key plank of our strategy. Through parental engagement we can understand issues they face and how we can best support them.
The hub approach
Armed with these insights, we created an attendance hub that represents all of our schools.
The hub meets each half term for three hours at a central location, bringing together senior leaders from secondary schools to develop processes, policies and strategies tailored to our specific needs.
While it would be easier to host these meetings virtually, we believe it is vital we meet in person to talk through issues and devise strategy.
Furthermore, we created a dedicated role of trust leader for attendance to head up the hub. This role involves analysing data, implementing policies and ensuring that we are aware of new issues emerging so we can be proactive, rather than reactive, on attendance challenges.
This data analysis is shared with schools in the form of weekly attendance insights, with a focus on pupils experiencing disadvantage. There is then more in-depth analysis through headteacher and trust meetings to help senior leaders drill into trends and learnings from other schools.
Part of this work also involves identifying and addressing the root causes of poor attendance.
For instance, if a student has two “broken weeks” (sporadic absences), they are reviewed by the attendance panel at their school, and targeted interventions are applied to prevent further absences.
In the past we didn’t look at data in this level of detail, but spotting these issues can indicate low engagement and help us tackle a problem sooner.
Finally, to make attendance a responsibility for all staff, the hub will deliver trust-wide CPD to all staff from September on how to approach attendance - from parental engagement to micro-scripts for staff when welcoming pupils back after a period of absence.
While the core training will be the same, there will be some local tailoring because we know all schools are different and some adaptability for context is key.
Embracing outside ideas
We have also collaborated with other schools and trusts in our region, such as Truro and Penwith Academy Trust in Cornwall, to refine our approach to lower-level attendance concerns. With St Cuthbert Mayne School in Torquay, we have created a dedicated attendance team that conducts regular home visits to reiterate the importance of attendance.
From this work we are beginning to see green shoots of recovery, with whole-trust attendance up by 2 per cent this year.
Some of our settings have seen especially notable increases, though: South Devon University Technical College (UTC), which has over 50 per cent of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, has had a 6 per cent increase in attendance.
We know there is more to do but by prioritising good relations with our students and their families, understanding attendance drivers and giving attendance a proper strategic focus, we are committed to improving outcomes for all of our young people.
Robert Coles is deputy CEO at Education South West
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