20089 National Attendance Strategy

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2008/9 National Attendance Strategy

• Dave Fletcher
• Deputy School Attendance Team Leader

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Reducing absence and persistent absence is

• a vital and integral part of schools and local
  authorities
• work to
• promote childrens welfare and safeguarding
• ensure every pupil has access to the full time
  education to which they are entitled
• ensure that pupils succeed whilst at school and
• ensure that pupils have access to the widest
  possible range of opportunities when they leave
  school.

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Looking back at 2006/7
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Looking back to 2007/8
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And in the priority schools and authorities

• 436 secondary schools targeted in 2006/07 to
  reduce persistent absence
• nearly 20 fewer persistently absent pupils by
  end of spring 2007 compared to spring 2006.
• 452 secondary schools targeted in 2007/08 to
  reduce persistent absence
• over 25 fewer persistently absent pupils by end
  of spring 2008 compared to spring 2008.

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Ministers Priorities for 2008/9

• Continue the system-wide drive for schools to
  reduce overall absence rates.
• Continue to reduce the levels of persistent
  absence in all schools.
• Be on trajectory to meet the Childrens Plan
  Delivery Goal that by 2011 no local authority
  will have more than 5 of its secondary school
  pupils who are persistently absent.
• Everyone working with children and their families
  recognises the links between absence and
• attainment and
• safeguarding pupils welfare.

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What is high persistent absence?

• Provisional data for autumn 2007 and spring 2008.
• All secondary school pupils who missed 48 or more
  sessions across the two terms.
• Local authorities with more than 7 persistently
  absent secondary pupils across their secondary
  schools.
• Secondary schools with more than 7 persistently
  absent pupils.
• Primary schools with more than 2.4 persistently
  absent pupils.

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Three levels of support

• universal support
• aimed at local authorities in which no schools
  have high levels of persistent absence
• targeted support
• aimed at local authorities in which at least one
  school has high levels of persistent absence but
  the level across the authoritys area is not
  high and
• intensive support
• aimed at local authorities with high levels of
  persistent absence.

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It is vital that schools and local authorities

• recognise how absence and attendance are
  intertwined with and underpin
• their wider roles and responsibilities and
• the wider desires and duties of society
• have robust and effective systems which
• deliver those outcomes
• are co-ordinated and complementary and
• ensure no child falls down the grate
• have systems such as
• school partnerships
• multi-agency working and
• Targeted Youth Support and
• eradicate all unnecessary or avoidable absence.