Attendance officer vacancies in secondary schools and colleges have soared by 146 per cent above pre-pandemic levels, Tes analysis of the latest data reveals.
The jump in schools searching for staff to focus on improving pupil absence rates comes against a backdrop of a major government attendance drive and campaign, and what school leaders have labelled “inadequate” local authority attendance services after a decade of funding cuts.
The data, collected by SchoolDash, also shows that overall adverts for support staff vacancies have risen by almost 80 per cent compared with pre-pandemic levels, prompting experts to warn of a “new normal to which the education system must adapt”.
The figures shared exclusively with Tes reveal some 1,601 attendance officer jobs have been advertised up to 8 March so far this academic year, a 146 per cent leap on the 431 recorded in the same period in 2018-19.
It comes after the latest government data showed that pupil absence remained far above pre-pandemic levels last year, despite government efforts to tackle the issue.
The number of attendance officer post vacancies also rose by 24 per cent compared with the 857 recorded last year.
Council attendance services ‘decimated’
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, warned the increasing need for schools to advertise for attendance officer roles is likely “the result of the inadequacy of local authority attendance services”.
He added that these “have been decimated over the past decade”, despite a recent government drive to tackle low attendance amid spiralling attendance figures post-pandemic.
Mr Barton called for the cuts to be reversed as it’s not ”financially viable to employ attendance officers” for many schools and there must be “more investment in local authority attendance support”.
The Department for Education announced 18 more school attendance hubs in January this year and a £15 million expansion of its mentor programme for persistently absent children.
Meanwhile, Labour has said it would use artificial intelligence to spot trends in absence as part of its long-term plans to tackle ongoing high levels of non-attendance.
James Bowen, assistant general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, added that financial viability was particularly a problem for smaller schools, and many “simply cannot afford a dedicated attendance officer, even if they would like one”.
Stuart Lock, chief executive of the five-school multi-academy trust Advantage Schools, said that he has attendance officers in every school.
He has also been able to recruit an Education Welfare Officer across his trust; something he said would be extremely difficult for a standalone school to afford.
Vic Goddard, co-principal of Passmores Academy in Harlow, Essex, said that the academy has had to find money to tackle the attendance issue, which meant it is left “feeling vulnerable in other areas”.
Increase in support staff roles
According to SchoolDash data, there was a 79 per cent increase in the number of adverts recorded for all support and auxiliary staff this academic year up to 8 March (16,145), compared with 9,043 recorded in the same period in 2018-19.
The number of support staff posts advertised in 2023-24 was even higher than the 15,706 recorded last year, which was up 74 per cent on the last pre-pandemic year.
Dr Timo Hannay, founding managing director of SchoolDash, said: “The persistence of these trends three years after the end of the pandemic may force us to conclude that these are no longer temporary aberrations, but a new normal to which the education system must adapt.”
Trust leader Mr Lock said that recruiting for vacancies for support staff has been “more challenging post-pandemic than I have ever experienced in my career”.
He added that the problem had been exacerbated by the competition in the wider labour market and the cost-of-living crisis.
The East of England-based Advantage Schools gave a higher pay rise to its support staff than the national level last year as a tool to aid retention, said Mr Lock.
Rise in demand for pastoral managers
SchoolDash also recorded a 92 per cent rise in teacher assistant jobs this academic year up to 8 March (3,897), compared with the number posted in the same time period in 2018-19 (2,034), and a slight rise on the number posted in the same period last year (3,846).
Posts advertised for higher-level teacher assistants have almost doubled compared with pre-pandemic levels, rising from 346 in 2018-19 to 684 this academic year. There were 576 recorded for the role last year.
Pastoral manager vacancies have also risen by a whopping 178 per cent since 2018-19 - to 714 up from 257 - against a backdrop of schools being left to deal with a “tsunami of pressures” hitting pupils’ wellbeing.
Dr Hannay said rises in pastoral manager adverts, attendance officers and other support staff roles could be due to “rising mental health concerns, post-pandemic increases in staff absence, a tightening labour market for manual roles and recent increases in pupil absence”.
Caretaker adverts up
The data also reveals that the number of adverts for caretakers and cleaners has soared by 126 per cent so far this year compared with 2018-19, from 224 to 506.
This is an even further increase on the 407 recorded for the same period last year.
Mr Bowen said that the “poor condition of much of the school estate makes the [caretaker] role more important than ever” and it was “worrying” to see schools struggling to recruit to this role.
Both Mr Bowen and Mr Barton said that the difficulty of hiring these staff creates an additional workload for leaders as they are forced to pick up the responsibilities.
A DfE spokesperson said: “Thanks to our fantastic teachers and school leaders, and our package of wide-ranging reforms designed to support schools to improve attendance, we are already seeing rapid improvement, with now 440,000 fewer children persistently absent or not attending last year alone.”
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