Attendance “deep dives” are needed at each school to work out the root causes of the problem in different areas, the academies minister has told Tes.
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester earlier this week, Baroness Barran said “deep dives into the reasons for non-attendance at each school” are needed.
She added that this would entail a “more detailed diagnostic on the root causes of non-attendance”, which would allow the Department for Education to look at the problem with a “sharper lens”.
Lady Barran told Tes that such deep dives are needed as there are significant differences in the causes of non-attendance between schools in different areas, even if the data looks similar.
Pupil absence rates rose over the past academic year, despite the government’s efforts to improve attendance post-pandemic. Data in May found that almost a quarter of pupils were persistently absent during the autumn term of 2022.
Asked if the department needed to accelerate its efforts to tackle absence, Lady Barran said that, instead, a response to the problem required enabling the DfE to analyse the issue better.
“Every school everywhere is working as fast as they can…It’s not about acceleration, it’s about analysing the problem with a sharper lens,” Lady Barran said.
“I think we should do a more detailed diagnostic on the root causes of non-attendance…and then think about answers to each of those [causes], building on what we have been doing through the attendance alliances.”
Attendance crisis response
The Attendance Action Alliance was set up by former education secretary Nadhim Zahawi and brings together a group of leading figures across education, health and social care once a month.
The minutes from the group’s latest meeting revealed that the department was planning to pilot local AAAs.
And speaking to Tes at the Conservative Party conference, Lady Barran said that it was important to look at the differences in attendance between different areas, adding that the differences were “significant…even if averages look similar”.
Last week, the DfE announced four new attendance hubs to help improve school attendance.
Headteachers’ leaders welcomed the announcement, but warned that the scheme alone does “not come anywhere close to addressing the scale of the problem”.
