Awareness of the factors that can lead to attendance issues

• Equalities, poverty, family dynamics, community, relationships, mental health, neurodiversity, trauma

Skills and qualities for working with children, young people and their families

• Listen
• Trust
• Be patient
• Empathy
• Don’t judge
• Encourage

Communication

• Safe welcoming, informal and neutral spaces
• Show interest while being inquisitive and transparent
• Explore the use of different communication methods

Early intervention

• Involve the whole family
• Consider the community as a place for interventions
• Co-design approaches
• Interventions must be consistent, continuous and sustainable

Change

• Deadlines
• Unrealistic expectations
• Negativity
• Punitive approaches
• Applying a hierarchy and being inflexible in approaches utilised

Strong partnerships

• Strategy, outcomes, objectives, knowledge, data and evaluations are a shared responsibility
• Partners must be invited and be a respected part of school communities
• Partnerships are a long term commitment and time is needed to nurture these.
• All partners are equal in the process

View all the partnership principles for improving attendance.

All stakeholders in education are needed to support attendance, ensuring a joined-up approach. This community partnership mapping tool has been developed to assist practitioners with identifying holistic solutions to complex and interconnected issues with attendance and engagement through meaningful partnership collaborations with a learner centred approach supporting equalities.

What this tool can do (output)

Helps schools identify who their community partners are for individual pupils presenting with attendance difficulties.

What does it change? (outcome)

Increases confidence in identifying, understanding and collaborating with local partners to implement approaches, while improving the understanding of the underlying causes of non-attendance.

Descriptors (map layers)

Pupil characteristics

Identify the individual attributes of a child or young person that need to be understood before any work can begin including current challenges they face and any equalities barriers. Information should include gender, siblings, language spoken at home, caring responsibilities, ethnicity and neighbourhood.

Pupils and their families

Identify the family and other significant relationships of importance to the pupil (i.e. friendships as well as extended family). Those significant people would be mum, step-dad, step brother, parental-grandparent, uncle, family friend, trusted neighbour, best friend, peer groups, friendship connections, geographical and online communities.

School networks

Identify and develop the school supports that are needed and can be accessed to implement approaches to improve attendance, including partner organisations and other opportunities. Those that would be part of this network include pupil support teachers, teachers with good relationships, breakfast club, home school link worker, CLD youth or family workers, peer mentors, campus police officer, SDS worker, social work etc.

Multi-agency support

Develop and strengthen your partnerships. Partners can offer support to the pupil or their family, including CLD services, family learning practitioners, community groups, locaI charities, neighbourhood based organisations, counselling services, specialised organisations e.g.
drugs/alcohol information, food and clothing banks. Seek to actively involve partners in how you plan and evaluate your attendance support.

Community context

Create and develop partnership links. Various partners can offer support to the pupil or their family, including CLD (Community Learning & Development) services, family learning practitioners, community groups, local charities, neighbourhood based organisations, counselling services, specialised organisations e.g. drugs/alcohol information, food and clothing banks. Parity with these partners must always be core to the support that is provided.

Take time to understand the needs of the communities that
children and their families live in. Utilise local and nationaI policies to develop our attendance outcomes. These should include attendance policies, GIRFEC procedures, National Improvement Framework, Local authority stretch aims, CLD plan, Local Outcome Improvement Plans, SIMD information, local health data, community safety data.

Questions to consider while mapping

• What can our partners offer/provide that will support our vision for attendance?
• Are we involving all of the right partners to support attendance in our school?
• Thinking of the pupils we are supporting with attendance, what do you already know about their needs? To what extent are their needs being met holistically? Who else should be involved to support their attendance needs?
• What processes and resources do we need to put in place to support attendance?
• How can we address or mitigate barriers to participation to ensure equity and support the pupils that need it most?
• How are we ensuring we have supported any challenges in relation to any equalities area, including anti-racim, LGBTI+, mental health and wellbeing and gender?

Meeting the wide ranging needs of all children, young people and their families is the heart of what makes an excellent school. There is no ‘silver bullet’ to addressing absence, however having effective and trusted partnerships are part of the solution.

Consider data

• Attendance data, local intelligence and vision (what does it tell us?)
• Collate data in local community context particularly equalities data that may adversely or positively impact
• Map out and investigate who are your key local partners to support with the vision

Discuss with the child and family

• Involve partners in these discussions
• Service level agreements

Funding arrangements

• Funds? - Shared resources, PEF, grants
• Consider how partnership contributions are reflected in local SAC plans and school improvement plans
• Local paperwork to measuring, capturing and reporting impact

Collaboration with partners

• Practical conversations - shared planning with partners
• Alternative curriculum: inform, vision, explore, create, outcomes

Delivery, monitoring and tracking

• Clear partnership plans, capturing roles and responsibilities (Who, how, when, what?)
• Ensure: consistency, sustainability, pathways

Voice, impact, evaluation and partnership legacy

• Capture outcomes: Linking to LA stretch aims and reflected in schools SQR and SAC evaluations

Explore the six steps to an effective partnership to support attendance in more depth.