The Department for Education has today published its response to a consultation on proposed new rules affecting school attendance registers and penalty fines.
New rules around school attendance
Here are seven DfE decisions announced in the document:
1. Attendance registers must be electronic
The government has said it will proceed with its proposal to require all schools to keep their admission and attendance registers electronically.
It believes this will “help to ensure...better early intervention” and allow “local partners to work together to prevent patterns of absence developing”.
2. Government ‘remains committed’ to national thresholds for attendance fines - but legislation is needed
The government said last year that it was seeking to remedy the fact that unauthorised absence from school was “treated inconsistently between different areas”, and wanted to bring in a national threshold for when fines should be handed out.
Today the DfE said it “remains committed to improving the consistency of approach to fixed penalty notices”.
However, the proposal was linked to the government’s Schools Bill, which was scrapped last year.
When consultation respondents were asked whether they agreed with the national thresholds proposed, three-quarters (75 per cent) strongly or somewhat disagreed with the proposal.
However, the response varied according to the type of respondent. For example, 59 per cent of school or academy trust employees and school governors or trustees agreed with the proposal, but 91 per cent of parents strongly or somewhat disagreed with it.
Margaret Mulholland, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said today that the responses regarding fixed penalty notices “demonstrate the tension which their use can create between schools and families”.
3. DfE won’t force schools to record remote education
The DfE said it will not require schools to record participation in remote education in the attendance register.
Respondents to the consultation said they were concerned about the “misuse of the new code to cover up illegal exclusions”.
4. LA consent will not be required before a school deletes pupils with EHCPs from its roll
The DfE will not go ahead with a plan to require schools to seek local authority consent before deleting the name of a pupil with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) from its roll.
This is despite 83 per cent of local authority employees and 60 per cent of school and academy trust employees and governors or trustees agreeing with the proposal.
However, 70 per cent of parents strongly or somewhat disagreed with it.
5. Changes could be made to reduce “confusion” over Code B
Earlier this year the Commons Education Select Committee heard that there was inconsistency over how schools were applying the “B code” to record absent pupils.
The code is intended to record off-site educational activity approved by the school.
Today’s consultation response says the government recognises that the current regulations “do not define who a school can authorise to supervise an educational activity, which has led to confusion and, in some cases, inappropriate recording”.
The DfE plans to “refine the definition for use in the final version of regulations”.
6. No pupils to be removed from school roll on medical grounds alone
The government intends to proceed with removing the grounds for pupils to be deleted from roll due to ill health
The DfE said that the “current ground for deletion” is “outdated” due to the changes in school staffing and provision for pupils with medical conditions since the regulations came into effect in the 1950s.
7. Sickness returns
The government plans to make it a legal obligation for schools to make a “sickness return” for pupils who have missed, or will miss, 15 days of school because of illness.
However, the DfE said that it is not its intention “for this to be used punitively” and the returns are “intended to ensure pupils who should be receiving support with their illness-related absence receive it promptly because information is shared in a timely manner”.
