Senior Attendance Compliance Specialist

Job summary and Responsibilities

Essex County Council (ECC) is one of the largest and most dynamic local authorities in the UK, serving a population of 2 million residents, and has a very successful track record of delivering transformational change.  ECC anticipated change was needed in the public sector and has worked to deliver better quality at lower cost.  We have an ambitious transformation agenda – one with the scope to reach every part of the council.  We are changing the way we think, the way we work, and the ways in which we deliver our services.  We are committed to becoming a place where individuals, partners and communities feel proud to play their role and genuinely want to belong.  We’re immensely proud of our flexible working options.
 
ECC is transforming how it delivers education services across one of the largest counties in the country in order to continue to improve and to ensure the best possible outcomes for every single child and young person.  We are determined to build on our journey of improvement which has seen 94% of schools now being rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted, and to focus more effectively on areas such as our more vulnerable children and young people to ensure Essex provides a wholly inclusive education which can meet the needs of all of our children and young people.
 
The Senior Attendance Compliance Specialist role is responsible for ensuring that children and young people out of education, or at risk of missing out on education, have access to suitable alternative high quality education provision.

This role focuses on managing the legal ramifications for families of not adhering to the requirement for children and young people to be in an educational setting and ensure they have the opportunity to benefit from this. Supporting the team in highlighting the most relevant course of action for children and young people to remain in or return to the educational setting is critical to ensure they receive the best level of education for them. Monitoring progress will be key to determining at what stage legal intervention is the best solution.

An experienced manager within the educational environment, you will exert your influence to negotiate with schools, accredited companies and families the right course of action to protect children and young people whilst balancing the need to move forward and take legal action to address non-compliance.

Key Accountabilities

• Responsible for ensuring effective and robust management information systems are used to monitor absence in schools, together with progress on improvement plans and outcomes and are able to evaluate the impact of legal interventions.
• Leading and motivating teams to ensure staff capability to manage and process cases efficiently and effectively, highlighting any safeguarding issues.
• Responsible for developing relevant policies and practices to ensure they support schools in improving attendance and ensuring clarity across Essex schools in the school attendance improvement agenda to ensure all statutory duties are implemented in a timely, focused and effective manner in order to safeguard children’s education.
• Responsible for ensuring processes are clear and relevant on matters relating to legal intervention ensuring the detail required in the preparation of court paperwork through to issuing penalty notices is exemplary to progress actions required to safeguard children and young people.
• Responsible for regular reporting on case progress to ensure information is available to demonstrate how the service delivery is producing positive outcomes, highlighting barriers and recommending solutions.
• Work collaboratively to develop positive working relationships with schools, academies and other partners, ensuring contribution to and influence of wider management groups.
• Responsible for providing effective advice, challenge and support to attendance teams, to ensure quality provision and positive outcomes, and to schools and academies to assist them in developing effective absence programmes which reduce the number of persistent absentees.
• Responsible for supporting prosecuting officers to ensure adequate resource and expertise in presenting individual cases of offences and breaches of legal requirements to ensure children are not missing an education.
• Contributes in using insights to maximise opportunities to develop new revenue streams and generate more income for the function and utilising funding opportunities to ensure new initiatives can be financially supported.
• Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.

Knowledge, skills and experience

• Educated to degree level in a relevant area or equivalent by experience. 
• Evidence of continuing professional development and expert knowledge in relevant professional area. 
• Experience, knowledge and understanding of how schools are organised and function together with specific knowledge of attendance issues and solutions focused.
• Experiencing of managing and motivating teams in an agile environment.
• Extensive working knowledge and understanding of legislation, regulations and guidance in the context of education. 
• Extensive experience of working with schools, young people and families specifically, on school attendance issues.
• Sound knowledge of child protection procedures and practice.
• Experience of effective implementation of school improvement strategies and initiatives together with successful outcomes.
• The job role requires you to be mobile throughout an operational area. Depending on the geographical area, access to a vehicle or another efficient mode of transport will be required.

As part of employment with Essex County Council (ECC) should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service.  The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate.  This is an annual subscription and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained.  For further information on the DBS update service please visit:  https://www.gov.uk/dbs-update-service

Benefits

For more information about the benefits of working for Essex County Council please go to our careers website

Closing Date: 3/08/18

Essex County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.
 
We seek the best talent from the widest pool of people as diversity is key to our success.
 
If you have any queries regarding this role, or require anything further, please contact the Essex Recruitment Team on 033 005 83330* 
*Calls to this number are charged in the same way as calls to numbers starting 01 or 02, please check with your service provider