The Department for Education’s renewed focus on the complex issue of attendance is welcome news.
But, as Sam Freedman pointed out last week on Tes, for the headline solution to revolve around five new attendance advisors, suggests we are underestimating the complexity of the contingent issues that underpin pupils’ sustained absence from school.
After all, leaders across the country have been grappling with attendance issues and particularly persistent absence for many years.
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Covid then shone an unforgiving light on these challenges - as well as creating new ones.
For example, we now have a worrying number of children who have not been back to school since the onset of the first lockdown and are at real risk of being lost to education.
This is why the renewed focus from the DfE is welcome, because it is an issue we have to address.
No quick fixes
To do this properly, we need to understand that attendance is a localised challenge that needs a local response, proper resourcing and timely access to specialist services and support: there are no cheap solutions or quick fixes.
The combination of resourcing and specialist expertise is precisely what we have seen at Unity City Academy, one of Academies Enterprise Trust’s (AET) schools in Middlesbrough, which has seen a major transformation in attendance over the past five years - and that was sustained through the pandemic.
For example, at its lowest point in 2015-16, the school reported overall attendance at 88 per cent with 40 per cent persistent absence.
Right now, despite Covid, the school’s attendance is running at 94.5 per cent with persistent absence down to 14 per cent.
These improvements have taken time but they have come about through a focused, committed and long-term plan of action.
A coordinated approach
This work started in 2016 when principal Andy Rodgers invested in two attendance officers so that every child was visited at home on the very first day of absence. This grew to four attendance officers in the years to follow as a result of DfE funding.
These highly skilled individuals would then hold regular attendance meetings with persistently absent students as well as work proactively with those at risk of falling into that category.
This has helped them build strong relationships with families and ensured access to social, emotional and mental health and counselling support where it is needed.
The team have also developed strong links with social care to tackle any underlying social issues before they develop and start to affect attendance.
Furthermore, Andy and his team also took a long hard look at the curriculum and the quality of teaching to ensure it delivered a teaching environment that engaged pupils.
This meant redesigning the curriculum, reintroducing a balance of GCSEs and vocational qualifications at key stage 4 to make sure their offer is appropriate, engaging and provides a clear pathway to future destinations.
In turn, students are supported to see the relevance of school to their future ambitions - the first step towards fully reinvesting in school life.
How funding can play its part
While there’s clearly more work to be done, Unity offers a positive example of what can be achieved with serious resourcing, access to specialist services and a willingness to review curriculum provision to ensure that it is relevant and engaging for all students.
Of course, no doubt many will be wondering how the school was able to fund this.
The answer is that Unity City was part of the DfE’s Opportunity North East (ONE) Vision school programme, which provided £24 million of funding to 30 schools in the North East of England to tackle their most persistent challenges.
The impact of this funding is clear when you break down the school’s improvements year on year.
The work on attendance began in 2016 and saw yearly improvements, moving from 88 per cent to 90.6 per cent and then 91.4 per cent. These initial improvements were relatively straightforward.
Moving beyond 92 per cent was another matter. Additional funding was introduced and invested in targeted resources, resulting in dramatic improvements with attendance rising to 92.7 per cent, then 93.9 per cent and now running at 94.5 per cent - significantly above the national average of 90.3 per cent as reported earlier in November, and considerably ahead of the average for Middlesbrough secondary schools, at 87.1 per cent.
Let’s work together
What all this shows is that targeted, well-resourced efforts to boost attendance alongside time spent building the trust of families and removing the barriers and issues to attendance that are contributing to a child being out of school can have a real impact - and funding is key to that.
As such if the government is serious about supporting schools to tackle attendance it should look at the improvement in schools like Unity, and no doubt many others that exist around England, and use this as the basis for a meaningful body of work on reducing absence - not just offering up five experts on the problem.
We’re happy to help with this by drawing together the experience of Unity, alongside that of our other schools, in an “attendance playbook” that captures the highest impact processes and practices from across our network of 57 schools and we are happy to share it with anyone who would like to see it - and, hopefully, build on it.
After all, tackling attendance is something everyone in education has a role to play.
It’s a complex issue but, as examples like the one above demonstrate, if it is adequately resourced and given the right focus, it’s not beyond our collective capacity - locally and nationally - to tackle it head-on and make a real difference.
Rebecca Boomer-Clark is chief executive of AET
