The Department for Education has said it will look at attendance at multi-academy trust level to better understand how it can be improved in schools.
The action is being taken following the latest meeting of the government’s Attendance Action Alliance (AAA).
Newly published minutes, from the meeting at Sanctuary Buildings last month, show that the DfE’s chief scientific adviser, Russell Viner, said that further analysis of variance in attendance was needed to understand where intervention was required.
The minutes also reveal that officials will look at MAT-level data “to further understand at what level attendance can be improved”.
The move follows calls from the academies minister, revealed exclusively by Tes, for attendance “deep dives” to take place at every school to work out the root causes of the problem in different areas.
The AAA is chaired by education secretary Gillian Keegan and was set up by Nadhim Zahawi, when he was education secretary, in an attempt to “supercharge efforts to improve school attendance”.
There are major concerns about lower attendance levels in school since the Covid pandemic, and the government has expanded the work of attendance hubs and attendance mentors to address this.
School attendance problems
Tes revealed earlier this year that multi-academy trusts were being lined up to establish attendance hubs after Ms Keegan urged sector leaders to get involved.
The rollout of the programme follows a pilot project set up by Northern Education Trust, which involved around 60 schools working together to tackle absence.
The minutes of the alliance meeting also highlight how newly formed local AAAs are being trialled “with different formats to identify what works and measure outcomes”.
Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza, who chaired a series of regional roundtables on attendance over the summer, told Tes earlier this term that it had become clear that the joint working needed at a local level to tackle the problem “isn’t happening”.
In November’s AAA meeting, Dame Rachel “emphasised the need for clarity of outcomes, getting right partners involved, (including from services beyond education) and clear accountability for raising attendance”.
And Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman, who also attended the meeting, said that “clear accountability” was “vital”.
Ms Spielman said that “roles and responsibilities across the system needed careful thought, including the role of MATs in shaping a place-based attendance strategy”.
The chief inspector also suggested that Ofsted regional directors could support the local AAAs by offering a regional-level perspective.
The minutes say that officials will now consider how to feed in a range of intelligence, including Ofsted regional directors’ perspectives, into local activity.
The AAA will also identify ways to include virtual school heads, who are responsible for promoting the educational achievement of looked-after children, in regional work.
