Best Practice

Absence and attendance: The battle continues

Attendance Pupil wellbeing Pastoral issues
Schools are working hard to enforce the message of ‘every lesson counts’ and return to pre-Covid levels of attendance. New guidance is aimed at supporting our work. Suzanne O’Connell takes a look
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New statutory guidance – Working together to improve school attendance – will come into force from August 19 this year and schools must have regard to it “as part of their efforts to maintain high levels of school attendance” (DfE, 2024).

As the title suggests, “working together” is the key message. Schools must work “jointly” with families and rather than “communicating” with them, we should be “working in partnership”.

However, where voluntary support has not been effective then measures can be applied. This includes the “attendance contract” – formerly the “parenting contract”.

Early intervention is crucial and support should not be limited to those with persistent and severe absence. The guidance states: “Look at all severities of absence to identify pupils who can be supported earlier before patterns become entrenched.”

When services don’t respond in a timely fashion then schools and/or local authorities should consider other avenues of support or temporary solutions while waiting. It is not sufficient to have put the wheels in motion – if nothing is happening then the responsibility rests with schools to look for alternatives. The process for working with families includes:

  • Understanding the individual needs of the pupil and family.
  • Working in partnership to put in-school support in place and working with others where external support is needed (and available).
  • Regularly reviewing and updating the support approach.

The guidance states: “Where parents do not engage in support, schools should work with the local authority or other local partners to formalise that support and, as a last resort, enforce attendance through legal intervention.”

 

Revisiting policies

In the light of the new guidance, schools should consider reviewing not only their attendance policy, but other policies that reference the school’s approach to attendance, including behaviour, anti-bullying, SEND, supporting pupils with medical conditions or disabilities, safeguarding and/or wellbeing, Pupil Premium, and support for young carers and also children with a social worker.

Additional emphasis is being placed on the support that schools give for pupils with specific challenges. The guidance states: “Be particularly mindful of pupils absent from school due to mental or physical ill health or their SEND and provide them with additional support.”

 

Fines and thresholds

As ever, the headlines have been grabbed by parental fines for absence after a new national framework for penalty notices set out increased fines of £80 for unauthorised absence and a new national threshold of 10 sessions of unauthorised absence in a rolling period of 10 school weeks – coming into force from September 2024.

Only two penalty notices can be issued to the same parent in respect of the same child within a three-year rolling period. The first is £80 if paid within 21 days – rising to £160 if not. A second penalty notice is a flat rate of £160.

The new framework also sets out when fines should be applied – for example, for holidays in term time. There are new attendance and absence codes contained in the 2024 regulations and there is more detail about when schools should grant a leave of absence, including “a temporary, time-limited part-time timetable”. It should be said that the new rules still give schools and local authorities discretion, meaning that fines do not have to be issued in every case.

Sickness returns must be shared with the local authority and apply to any pupil who we think will miss 15 days consecutively or cumulatively because of sickness. The guidance states: “School staff are not expected to diagnose or treat physical or mental health conditions, but they are expected to work together with families and other agencies with the aim of ensuring regular attendance for every pupil.”

 

Unintended consequences

Earlier this year, analysis published by FFT Education Datalab warned that the families of one in five pupils would have received fines for school absence if the new thresholds had been implemented in 2022/23, with those living in poverty with SEND worst affected.

The analysis (Bibby & Thomson, 2024) is based on attendance data from almost 10,000 schools and considered the number of pupils who would have broken this threshold in 2022/23.

While the results show that the bulk of fines would have been given to secondary-age pupils, at primary level 15% of pupils would have broken the threshold in years 3 to 6, with a slightly higher proportion being fined in years 1 and 2. The highest rate of fines would have been in Reception (around 17%).

Around 6% to 7% of pupils across all primary year groups would have broken the threshold more than once.

However, when it comes to pupils on free school meals, between 23% and 25% of primary pupils would have been fined in 2022/23 compared to between 11% and 16% of their non-disadvantaged peers (depending on the year group). The same story is told for pupils with SEN: around 20% of primary pupils across the year groups would have been fined compared to around 14% to 16% of their non-SEN peers.

 

Senior Attendance Champion

Coming back to the guidance, it also states that this work must be led by a school senior attendance champion. Responsibilities for this role include:

  • Setting a clear vision for improving and maintaining good attendance.
  • Establishing and maintaining effective systems for tackling absence.
  • Making sure that systems are followed by members of staff.
  • Having a strong grasp of absence data to focus the collective efforts of the school.
  • Regularly monitoring and evaluating progress, including the efficacy of the school’s strategies and processes.

 

Will it make a difference?

Victoria Franklin is an education consultant and national trainer and is one of the DfE’s attendance advisors. She views the new guidance with optimism, particularly the clarity of expectation that she argues it brings: “Attendance is everyone’s responsibility just like safeguarding and through the expectations placed on schools, governors, academy trust boards and local authorities, this responsibility is explicitly laid out.”

However, Anthony David, the executive headteacher of St Paul’s Primary School and Monken Hadley CE Primary School in London, is worried about schools’ capacity to cope with these expectations: “What is no longer available are the secondary and tertiary resources that schools traditionally used to support more challenging conversations at a time when schools are experiencing more aggressive confrontations, both verbally and online.”

He also feels that schools have already been working with and supporting families as much as they can and need the support of wider services – those same services, such as attendance officers, that have been cut back due in recent years. A survey last year from the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL, 2023) revealed that 81% of school leaders consider local authority attendance support services to be inadequate.

This is also something the National Association of Head Teachers is also pointing out. General secretary Paul Whiteman said: “Fines have long proven to be too blunt a tool and largely ineffective at improving persistent absence. What is really needed to tackle poor attendance is more targeted resources to find out the reasons behind absence, including support for vulnerable families and for children and young people’s mental health. Without that work, higher fines could just be further punishing already struggling families and children.”

Adam Cooper, headteacher at Knavesmire Primary School in York, believes that the guidance should offer clarity and will underline the legal obligation to work together – but it’s funding that would make the greatest difference for him and his school: “If I could afford a member of staff specifically for attendance this is the only real difference that we could make, we are doing everything we can now.”

Ms Franklin also emphasises the need for training: “Attendance officers are often catapulted into the role internally or by default and left alone to pick the job up.”

When it comes to the threshold, Ms Franklin is adamant that it was necessary: “Currently thresholds are different across the country and by local authority, often resulting in parents being subject to different criteria for this type of intervention.”

Mr Cooper again welcomes the “clarity and consistency of expectation” of a national threshold, but is not sure if it will target the right people.

Ms Franklin points out that an important aspect of the guidance is that of “support first”. She explained: “So the use of a penalty notice would be considered where interventions have not or are not working or where unauthorised term-time absence for a holiday has occurred and meets the threshold. The rise in the amount will undoubtedly make some parents consider whether this is something that they will factor in, particularly if the fine relates to unauthorised leave of absence for a holiday.”

However, as prices during school holidays continue to be unreasonably high, Mr Cooper is not sure what the impact will be from September: “Parents say that it’s still cheaper to have a term-time holiday including the cost of the fine. The issue is still holiday costs increasing so significantly in the school holidays.”  

 

Headteacher Update Summer Term Edition 2024

This article first appeared in Headteacher Update's Summer Term Edition 2024. This edition was sent free of charge to UK primary schools in May 2024. A free-to-access digital edition is also available via www.headteacher-update.com/content/downloads

 

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