Devon Termly Attendance Update
Welcome to the first edition of the Attendance Update this academic year. The Attendance Update has changed frequency to a termly edition.
It’s been a busy start to the academic year, and we hope you all managed to get a well-earned rest over the October holiday, and we look forward to
working with you in term 2.
Included in the newsletter:
- Letter from Chief medical Officer - Mild illness and school attendance
- Is my child too ill to attend school - parent guide
- Role of GP in maximising school attendance
- Why attendance is everyone's business
- Guide for parents on school attendance
- Attendance Improvement Team Core Offer
- School level model letter process and other supporting documents
- Attendance Code spotlight - all codes
The Chief Medical Officer and leading health professionals have written to schools to provide a clinical and public health perspective on mild illnesses and school attendance. They have shared useful information for schools to pass onto parents including when it’s appropriate for parents and carers to send their children to school with a mild illness.
Following the pandemic, some parents and carers are still worried when they should send their child to school. We would urge you to share the following document on your website.
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All schools are already supporting families to build up children’s confidence to attend school regularly. The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) recently approved 5 principles to promote school attendance. We hope this guidance will support GPs in having sensitive and reassuring conversations with parents, carers and pupils. |
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The Children’s Commissioner has produced an infographic to help support colleagues understand the importance of attendance. For more information please visit:
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Members of the Attendance Action Alliance have worked with the Department for Education to develop this short guide which helps parents understand how they can work with their school and local authority to support their children to attend school and get the right support. For more information and template please visit: |
Under the guidance Working together to improve school attendance (publishing.service.gov.uk), from the Autumn term the Attendance Improvement Officer (AIO) will:
- Support and work with Devon schools on the early identification of emerging patterns of irregular pupil attendance, whilst paying particular attention to supporting our most vulnerable pupils
- Work together to agree a joint approach for severely absent pupils (50% and below) this may include specific support with attendance or a whole family plan
- Provide Ad hoc advice, support and guidance via email or telephone
- Arrange a termly targeted support meeting for all Secondary Schools and large Primary Schools, see information on the targeted support meetings below
- Have regular contact with smaller Primary Schools
- Advise the family’s lead practitioner on any attendance elements of a family’s attendance plan
- Give advice on legal intervention where all support processes have failed or where there has been non engagement and all parties agree this is the most appropriate course of action. See the range of legal interventions available below.
- Advice to schools about undertaking formal legal escalation meetings (formally fast track).
- working to develop strategic policies and procedures in partnership with schools and other agencies to improve pupil attendance across the county
This means that the Attendance Improvement Officers will not be able to visit schools on a regular basis to discuss attendance or be able to attend school-based meetings which are arranged to discuss and agree action plans in relation to individual pupil absence.
The AIO may attend to offer support to new members of school staff where structuring such meetings is an identified training need.
Further information about the core can be found on:
To support you with your responsibility under section 2 of the DfE guidance, there will be a model attendance letter process for schools available for you to download from our website. Please be mindful that:
- This process is not statutory
- You do not have to follow the exact process however it helpful for ensuring you can evidence how you have addressed all possible barriers to attendance
- You can take out wording that you do not it feel is appropriate for your school, however it is suggested you do not change the wording around ‘medical evidence.’
- The action plan can be produced when working with families as it could be used as evidence in court. It also gives a good indication of whether an Education Supervision Order could be more appropriate.
Alongside the model letter process, there is also a range of documents on our website you may find useful:
- Holiday warning letter
- Sample letter encouraging good attendance
- Scripts for telephone calls
- DfE documents encouraging good attendance through parent messages
- Guide to school attendance meetings
- Sample Secondary pupil ‘return to school’ form
- Sample attendance tracker
- Restorative approach form when obtaining pupil voice around attendance
All forms will be available to download from our website from September 2023.
Updates will go out in the attendance newsletter so please subscribe to this if you haven’t already.
There is a range of other supporting documents you could utilise. Including:
- Tackling persistent absence including trigger points for escalation
- Data target setting and analysis
- School on page - Schools can use this for inform governing bodies of the present situation around attendance in the school if they wish
- School guidance and legislation
- A variety of sample posters encouraging good attendance
There are many queries on the statistical meaning of each code and when to use them. We have produced some 'grab sheets' for all attendance codes as well as more in-depth One Minute Guides for B and D codes.
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