Development of plans, policies and guidance: Guidance on creating a local authority and school policy

Included, Engaged and Involved Part 1: Positive Approach to the Promotion and Management of Attendance in Scottish Schools (IEI1) was published in 2019. It provides advice on good practice and establishes the national requirements regarding classifying and recording attendance and absence. There is an ‘expectation that local authorities and schools would use IEI1 to revise and review existing policies and procedures on attendance, taking account of local circumstances and involving all partners in the development of the new policy’. IEI1 recognises that although there will be ‘local variation in processes and internal systems, there should be a degree of consistency of approach and key messages reflected in local authority policies and procedures’.

Local authorities have the responsibility to:

• ensure all staff are aware of IEI1 guidance;
• have clear guidance on supporting attendance and managing absence;
• ensure that all schools have in place policies that promote good attendance and outline procedures to support the recording and management of attendance; and
• ensure that schools have staged intervention processes in place to support attendance.

In 2023, Improving Attendance: Understanding the Issues revealed that there is significant variation across local authorities and establishments in how data is used to support attendance including:

• variations in thresholds that initiate support;
• monitoring procedures for tracking attendance and late comings;
• use of reason codes; and
• the use and monitoring of part-time timetables.

Additionally, a small-scale survey across two local authorities revealed just over half of the schools surveyed had an attendance policy of their own. Of those schools, only one third said staff had access to their policy and only a fifth said parents had access to the policy. The report and survey findings imply that over time there has been drift between national guidance and implementation at local authority and school level.

One of the ’actions for consideration’ from the Improving Attendance: Understanding the Issues report was that ‘local authorities should carefully monitor their strategic and implementation plans for improving attendance or develop a plan where one is not in place’.

IEI1 encourages regular review of attendance policies and procedures to ensure they are updated in line with new legislation or national priorities. This new Education Scotland guidance has been designed to support local authorities and schools to create, update or refresh their own policy guidance.

General principles

To promote and improve consistency of implementation and practice, there should be a clear line of sight between legislation, national guidance, contextualised local authority policy and procedures and each individual educational settings own policy.

Legislation and policy guidance that is non-negotiable, or fixed, should not be duplicated across the different levels of guidance but should be specifically referenced. Duplication introduces the potential for re-interpretation and inconsistency in implementation. For example, the national definition of attendance is contained within IEI1, it should not be redefined or contextualised in local authority policy guidance. Working in this way should maximise consistency of implementation at every level and minimise drift from policy guidance and authority protocols at establishment level.

The following highlights non-negotiable source information and what can be contextualised at local authority or establishment level.

Legislation (non-negotiable)

Education (Scotland) Act 1980 - Section 14, section 30 and section 35.
Children’s (Scotland) Act 1995 - Section 1(3)
The Standards in Scotland’s Schools Act 2000 Section 1
The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004
The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, (Part 9)
UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill 2024

National Policy (non-negotiable)

Guiding Principles
Local Authority Responsibilities
Definition of Attendance

Wider policy context:

• GIRFEC Policy Guidance
• National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland (2014)
• National Home Education Guidance

Local authority policy (contextualised)

Local policy context

• Improvement plan
• Supporting policies

Operational procedure

• Recording and reporting processes
• LA monitoring processes
• Minimum trigger thresholds
• LA Staged Intervention Model
• Part-time timetable guidance
• SEEMIS code definitions
• Quality assurance processes
• Best practice guidance for ELC settings

School policy (contextualised)

School context

• Values/vision/aims
• Supporting establishment policies

Contextualised

• Universal preventative approaches
• Universal supports and structures
• Staged Intervention for setting
• Universal and targeted approaches for parental engagement

Who should be involved in developing local policies?

Local authority policy should be developed in consultation with all stakeholders such as central team members, headteachers, professional associations, and potentially learner, parent/carer and partner representatives.

Establishment policy should be developed in consultation with all stakeholders such as pupils, parents/carers, staff, and supporting professional and community partners.

As all local authorities and learning communities are different, it is therefore expected that policies will be suitably contextualised to meet local needs. This guidance provides general principles only and a suggested structure to support local authorities and educational establishments to create or refresh their own policies. This guidance is not prescriptive.

Local authority policy - basic structure

The policy should have 3 key parts:

Part 1 - Policy (the why)
Part 2 - Procedures (the what and the how – operational processes)
Part 3 - Appendices (the detail and supportive information)