School Attendance Update - Warwickshire Attendance Service
School Attendance Update - Warwickshire Attendance Service
The impact of COVID-19 has brought a sharp focus on to school attendance. Following Nadhim Zahawi’s appointment as Secretary of State for Education, he announced that school attendance will be a priority.
New measures to increase school attendance
The DfE announced on 25th January 2022:
- As part of the plans to tackle avoidable absence, local authorities and academy trusts will be expected to have plans for how they will provide targeted support for pupils who need it and work with schools to help spread best practice across the school system in driving good attendance.
- The Children’s Commissioner is also working with a number of local authorities to review their data and step up efforts to support children that are persistently absent from school.
New measures to increase school attendance - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
School attendance: Improving consistency of support
The DfE has opened a consultation seeking views on what should be included in measures to improve the consistency of school attendance support and management. The details can be found at the link below:
https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-attendance-policy-and-strategy-team/school-attendance-improving-consistency-of-support/
Data Collection
The DfE have acknowledged that access to better data at a national, regional and local level will both help highlight particular challenges and identify solutions that are currently working well and can be shared. They are therefore trialling the automated collection of attendance data. Schools will be contacted by a company a company named Wonde, who will ask for agreement to share daily pupil level and attendance data.
It was emphasised that this voluntary data will not be used for:
- Ofsted or Regional Schools Commissioner (RSC) decision
- making for judgements around what constitutes a school causing concern
- for inspection, academisation or decisions to place or remove a school in a Trust.
COVID-19 Attendance Advice
If you have any specific questions about COVID-19 related absence, please feel free to email the Warwickshire Attendance Service:
was@warwickshire.gov.uk
Useful links:
School attendance: guidance for schools - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)