Attendance is an important aspect of any child’s education. In line with the Department for Education’s “Working together to improve school attendance” strategy we believe that successfully treating the root causes of absence and removing barriers to attendance is a partnership between student, home and school.
Students need to be in school regularly and engaging in their learning to benefit from their education. School attendance is vital to the life chances of young people, being in school improves health, wellbeing and socialisation. Children with poor attendance tend to achieve less both academically and socially.
Therefore, all partners should work together to:
Aspire:
to high standards of attendance from all students and parents and build a culture where every child can, and wants to, be in school and ready to learn by prioritising coming to school every day.
Monitor:
attendance data rigorously via the parent Arbor app to identify patterns of poor attendance (by day and by lesson) as soon as possible so all partners can work together to resolve them before they become entrenched.
Listen and understand:
when a pattern is spotted, we will talk with students and parents to listen to and understand barriers to attendance and work together to resolve them.
Facilitate support:
to remove barriers in school and help students and parents to access the help they need to overcome the barriers outside of school. This might include an Early Help referral or whole family intervention to an external agency to support with wider issues.
Formalise support:
to work together where absence persists and voluntary support is not working or not being engaged with. Home and school will work together to explain the consequences clearly and ensure support is in place to enable students to respond. This may include a referral to the Legal Intervention Team.
Enforce regular attendance.
when all other avenues have been exhausted and support is not working or not being engaged with, we will enforce attendance through statutory intervention: a penalty notice in line with the National Framework or prosecution to protect the child’s right to an education.
You will find links to relevant and useful documents below.
