The Department for Education is considering a further £15 million expansion of its attendance mentor programme to help around 3,600 pupils a year, according to a contract notice published today.
The expansion would build on a three-year intensive mentoring programme already underway offering one-to-one support to persistently absent children and their families, which is run by children’s charity Barnardo’s in five Priority Education Investment Areas (PEIAs).
Concerns over absence have spiralled since the pandemic and the government has overseen an expansion of a pilot scheme involving attendance hubs and attendance mentors.
A Prior Information Notice (PIN) published today - estimated at £15 million - reveals the department is considering expanding the pilot further to around 10 identified PEIAs.
The widening of the programme comes after the DfE announced in May an earlier expansion of the programme to 1,665 persistently and severely absent pupils and their families across Knowsley, Doncaster, Stoke-on-Trent and Salford to understand and overcome barriers to attendance and support them back into school.
In September, the absence rate peaked above the levels seen in the same time period last year, despite a government drive to increase school attendance.
Attendance crisis
The PIN, published this week, explains that the department is “looking into options to expand” the programme and aims “to enhance capacity for early help/intervention”.
As part of its attendance drive, the government has also created attendance hubs: a programme in which a lead school shares its approaches to attendance with a network of schools that have similar cohorts and challenges.
The first attendance hub was established by Rob Tarn, CEO of Northern Education Trust and member of the Attendance Action Alliance, to provide other schools with techniques, resources and advice on how to improve attendance, as trialled in the trust’s North Shore Academy.
Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza told Tes this year that school leaders must not be left to deal with the pupil attendance crisis “on their own”.
A Department for Education spokesperson said that documents published on Contracts Finder “are not a commitment to go ahead with suggested plans” and the requirements and value of a contract set out in the PIN “are subject to change”.
