Schools use robots to help tackle school avoidance

A school that uses robots to help integrate absent pupils back into lessons has been chosen as one of two pilot projects to be backed by a programme aiming to improve attendance and parental engagement.

The first projects selected for the New Schools Network (NSN) Innovation Pilot Programme will focus on engaging pupils at risk of emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA) and supporting young people making the transition between primary and secondary school.

Schools in Manchester and Bristol will test whether identifying warning signs earlier and providing practical support to families can prevent vulnerable and disadvantaged pupils disengaging from education.

At William Hulme’s Grammar School in Manchester, staff will bring together existing information to identify pupils showing early signs of disengagement as part of a drive to help children with EBSA.

Pupils and families at the all-through school will receive coordinated support, including help from a dedicated parent liaison officer and, where appropriate, technology to support reintegration into lessons.

Supporting pupils with EBSA

Sophie Galloway, project lead and vice-principal of William Hulme’s Grammar School, said: “Very often, EBSA attendance is a lagged indicator, so your best chance of supporting pupils is identifying them early.”

To help achieve this, the school is developing a “multiple vulnerabilities tracker”, which combines hard data on areas such as attendance and behaviour with other indicators.

Ms Galloway added: “We have found with pupils who have EBSA here that it has often started with them disengaging from a lesson or saying they don’t want to go to a lesson.”

The school is developing different levels of support plans depending on whether pupils are disengaging, not attending some lessons or not attending school.

The school is also using AV1 “telepresence” robots to help pupils make a return to lessons.

Ms Galloway says the school has identified how to best use these to support reintegration. She explained: “We have found limited to no success if the robot goes home…so we have a space within school where we use the robots so they have to come into school to access the lesson.”

Mentoring pupils moving to secondary

In Bristol, trained pupils in Year 12 will mentor younger pupils during the transition from primary to secondary school.

The Bristol Connect Project, led by the Bristol Education Partnership, will also provide families with a dedicated engagement worker and access to small grants to remove practical barriers to education.

They are the first two projects backed by NSN’s Innovation Pilot Programme and were selected from 96 expressions of interest.

NSN director Meg Powell-Chandler said: “Too often, help begins only after a child’s absence has become an established pattern. These projects will test whether schools can spot the warning signs sooner and work with families to address the reasons a pupil is struggling to attend.

“NSN’s Innovation Pilot Programme received 96 expressions of interest in two weeks, which shows how keen schools are to test new, evidence-informed answers to tackle the barriers their pupils are facing and improve their outcomes.”

EBSA ‘an increasing problem’

Ms Galloway said: “EBSA is becoming an increasing problem, which is particularly an issue with some of our more vulnerable pupils, and we have to do something differently if we want that to change.”

She added: “We want to test the impact of earlier recognition of warning signs, earlier intervention and family support to keep more children in school.”

Earlier this year, a Tes investigation highlighted that teachers do not feel equipped to support students with EBSA.

Rachel Jewell, project lead at Bristol Education Partnership, said: “The transition from primary to secondary school is a critical period for engagement with education.”

She added that in working with pupils, families, schools and communities, “we’re taking a holistic approach that recognises young people don’t experience school in isolation”.

Raising attainment for disadvantaged pupils

Both projects seek to improve parental engagement to support pupil attendance, with the aim of improved outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.

The pilots aim to build on interventions that are already said to show promising results, such as “near-peer mentoring” in Bristol or using AV1 classroom robots to support lesson reintegration at William Hulme’s Grammar School.

The pilots are expected to run from September 2026 to September 2027. Findings, practical resources and recommendations will be published in autumn 2027.

Earlier this year, Ms Powell-Chandler wrote for Tes to set out the aims of the Innovation Pilot Programme.

She said: “We have spent decades trying to raise attainment for disadvantaged pupils. We understand the problem better than ever. Yet too many still face barriers that limit their ability to access and benefit from a great education.

“There are many such barriers. But two, in particular, remain highly significant and stubbornly resistant to change: attendance and parental engagement.”