Development of plans, policies and guidance: Exemplification of roles and responsibilities
Learners will:
- Take personal responsibility for attending as often as possible
- Try not to be late
- Engage in all aspects of the life of the school including learning
- Contribute to the daily life of the school and encourage peers to attend
Parents and carers will:
- Ensure their child understands the importance of education and attendance
- Support their child to attend as often as possible
- Notify the school as soon as possible when their child is unexpectedly absent
- Work with staff to minimise absence and reduce any barriers to attendance
- Book medical appointments outside school hours where possible and give advance notice if an absence is unavoidable
- Keep the school up to date with telephone numbers and emergency contacts
Staff will:
- Proactively and regularly promote good attendance through lessons, assemblies, school events, and informal and formal conversations with learners, parents/carers and partners
- Support learner engagement using a range of strategies
- Keep regular and accurate records of attendance for every learner
- Share concerns about a learner's engagement, attendance or wellbeing at the earliest stage
- Respond sensitively to learners and parents/carers when exploring attendance concerns
Senior leaders will:
- Make good attendance and punctuality a priority for everyone
- Promote attendance through policies, documents, training, meetings and communications
- Improve overall attendance and reduce lateness through supportive interventions
- Explore all absences
- Identify and investigate patterns of absence
- Keep a chronology of repeated and regular absences and associated follow-up actions
- Ensure consistency in supporting attendance and challenging barriers to attendance
- Ensure effective communication through text, phone, letter, email and face to face meetings
- Treat learners and parents/carers as partners when exploring appropriate supports
- Enable staff and partner agencies to support all children and young people to attend and engage in learning
Local authority leads will:
- Work together with school leaders to set whole school cultures
- Prioritise attendance and take an active role in improvement
- Ensure the accurate recording of learner attendance and absence in accordance with Included, Engaged and Involved Part 1 (2019)
- Ensure senior leaders fulfil local authority expectations and statutory duties
- Make special arrangements for children and young people granted an exemption from attending schools
- Support schools to provide training which enhances staff understanding and implementation of policy and procedures for the promotion and management of attendance
- Offer opportunities to share effective practice
Partners will:
- Work with learners, parents/carers and staff to maximise learner participation in education
- Contribute to attendance support planning
- Where possible, attend meetings and catch-ups relating to attendance and prioritise these
- Be clear on what the offer is from your organisation/setting
- Communicate when things are not going well and be solution focussed to mitigate issues
- Ensure that records and or recordings are accurate and are shared timely with appropriate colleagues
- Provide local knowledge to establishments to help them better understand circumstances affecting attendance
- Build capacity of other staff to utilise different approaches to improve attendance
- Support community-based planning to improving attendance through alternative curriculum offers