Attendance First

Improving attendance across CLF and nationally, is a wicked problem. There are several reasons for the wickedness:

• Things that work in one place, do not necessarily work elsewhere.
• Responsibility for attendance sits with different decision-makers in families, and there are different factors to consider for different age ranges. Identifying barriers takes significant time and resource.
• We have strategies that appear to solve attendance short-term but can be near-impossible to replicate over time. For example, attendance is typically higher on key exam dates.
• Barriers are complex – they are multidimensional and, in many cases, involve complex family dynamics, decision-making and culture that sit outside of school jurisdiction.
• Solutions are complex – they can require shared aims and values, teacher time to build and maintain strong relationships, a shared understanding of known techniques and approaches and strong communication. They require training, time and resource that fall beyond the usual remit of schools at a time when access to attendance expertise, resources and capacity are limited.
• The social contract that society has with the education system is damaged because of a range of factors, including the pandemic, cost of living and shifting social norms.

Regardless of the wickedness of the problem, the rationale for improving attendance is clear, particularly for disadvantaged learners. We know that improving the attendance habits of disadvantaged children will likely foster socioeconomic mobility and social inclusion and increase attainment (Heckman and Kautz 2013).

For us at CLF, improving the attendance of disadvantaged learners means they are in our schools more often, where we can maximise educational opportunity to level the playing field, provide them with tickets to ride to exams and beyond, whilst developing their sense of agency so they go on to lead successful lives.

If they aren’t in, we miss our chance, and they miss their chance, and for many we are the only second chance.

O’s timetable

When talking to pupils about attendance, we often say:

‘Tell me about your timetable’ And let the conversation flow…

This was the very prompt I used when talking to O, a year 9 pupil at one of our Secondary academies in South Glos. O is a young carer, and his attendance had been a concern until recently.

The conversation went like this:

Tell me about your timetable…

Well, on a Monday I have doubles, I HATE doubles. Tuesday is not so bad, single lessons, good tutor time (no assembly) and most of my mates are in on a Tuesday. Wednesday is the best day – DT, I love DT. Thursday, double science, not as bad as double maths but not great. Friday, PE and English, yuk.

He did this without getting his timetable out of his bag.

What makes it tricky for you to attend school?

I’m a carer for my siblings, I get them ready and sometimes we miss the bus. If it’s raining, it’s sometimes hard to come in. My mum finds it hard.

What if you’re feeling a bit under the weather?

Hmmm, I think about breakfast club, and that sometimes works, sometimes I come in now, I know I will get sent home if I’m poorly, sometimes I feel better after breakfast.

What about if you were feeling a bit rough and it was raining, on a Wednesday?

I would 100% be in, 100%. Never miss DT with XX teacher. He likes me, he thinks I’m good at DT. I would just come in sick; wouldn’t I, Miss?! (Turns to the pastoral lead, smiling)

In this simple series of sentences O has told me a few things:

• He does not like double lessons.
• He does not like assemblies.
• He thinks more pupils are in on a Tuesday – worth exploring.
• He likes DT, not just the subject, but the subject with his DT teacher – he likes me and thinks I’m good. He likes the lesson so much that it pulls him into school every Wednesday.

This powerful pull to learning is what we find in research too, again and again.

A 2016 study of middle and high school student attendance found that approximately half of all absences from class were due to class truancy on days attended rather than to full day absences (Whitney & Liu, 2016). Individual teachers within schools may be able to attract students to attend their classes even when other teachers in their schools cannot.

Liu & Loeb (2017) also found that teachers have large effects on student attendance, when judging quality of teaching by outcomes (test scores) in Secondary schools. Students had approximately 45 percent fewer unauthorised absences in maths classes, and 55 percent fewer in English classes, if they had a teacher who was better than average.

When looking at Primary attendance, in 2017, Seth Getherson summarised that:

‘…teachers have arguably causal, statistically significant effects on student absences that persist over time’.

We see the importance placed on traditionally important events and there is a strong purpose or draw (favourite subject/teacher) in our figures at CLF. Here are our Secondary attendance figures for both English Literature exams. For paper 1, CLF Secondary attendance hit a relative (2023) high at 92%, whilst for paper 2, all schools showed an increase on the previous day (91.1%). These figures are because of near 100% attendance for year 11.

When the content matters, our pupils come in.

In O’s case, free breakfast club was helping,but it was the learning and the teacher that were the pull.

Attendance is everyone’s responsibility – what do we really mean?

In our CLF attendance pillar we have systems and processes that support attendance involving multiple layers of support. In these systems we invest hours of time: sending letters, coding accurately, chasing missed marks, typing texts, using our attendance tracker, analysing data – knowing our context and honing and refining the ways in which we track and share awareness of attendance.

Across our trust we are getting better at ensuring that our processes and procedures reinforce status, belonging and esteem, we are refining guidance and our policies, ensuring that we build relationships, privileging disadvantage even over.

This is important work, it means we know where our pupils are (safeguarding, tick!), it means that our coding for the DFE is accurate (compliance, tick!) and that we know and understand our data (accurate baseline, tick!).

But these approaches alone will not improve our figures - they certainly won’t pull O into school when it’s raining, and he has a double lesson!

We know that barriers to attendance are multiple and varied. We also know that there cannot be a one-size fits all approach to resolving attendance barriers for individual pupils, because the key is to know the child and family, know their barriers, and do what we can to remove them. Leaders are excellent problem solvers, and we are already good at coming up with innovative solutions– from free or priority spaces at breakfast clubs, walking buses, home visits, free bus passes, school dogs walking pupils in to special jobs and responsibilities…there is no shortage of solutions across our trust.

So why are these approaches not improving the figures?

An example:

Pupil named D misses their bus on a day that they have double science, not a lesson they enjoy or are making progress in.

Imagine these two scenarios:

In both scenarios, systems were followed, coding was accurate and there was some action that was prompted by the absence.

So, what is the different between the two scenarios?

School is a deeply human experience and only in our actions and behaviour at school level, can we use our relationships to maximise the pull to learning.

‘There is hope in people, not in society, not in systems, but in you and me.’

Jiddu Krishnamurti

When we talk about attendance being everyone’s responsibility, we mean going further than we have gone before, and working together to make sure that the learning pull into school is stronger than the pull to anywhere else.

We know that teacher time is valuable, one of the greatest levers for student attainment, achievement and attendance, and a rich resource. As leaders we must protect and prioritise this time, placing best bets for maximum impact, and implementing a few strategies well.

Collaborating around attendance to develop a strong pull to learning is a CLF best bet for realising our core strategy for 2030, Equity through Education.

To maximise this pull, to ensure more pupils attend lessons, on a regular basis, requires teamwork and togetherness, strong communication and a commitment to ensuring that learning is purposeful and that relationships reinforce status, belonging and esteem. We need to teach well and meet needs in great schools. We need to make sure that pupils feel good about themselves (give status), reinforce their place in our classrooms and across our sites (belonging) and build a sense of pride and achievement in their work (esteem). We need to do all of this, and go further than before to ensure that more pupils come to school every day.

Because when we get it right our pupils are 100% in; it’s irresistable. We do this not because it is easy but because it is hard and it matters, really matters.

Attendance is everyone’s responsibility: reflections for leaders

• What are our pupils telling us about their attendance? Where are the pulls?
• How often do the adults working directly with the pupils, know about what is on offer to support their students to attend well, and how often are they enabled to go out of their way to find out and act on it?
• What does ‘going further than before’ mean in your setting? How well is this embedded in your school improvement aims for this academic year?

CLF strategic attendance aims, 2023:

• Secondary capacity, communication across teams and expertise – developing a shared understanding of what good looks like. Getting closer to Secondary leaders, empowering them to audit across in triads (sharing best practice and peer support), supporting recruitment to attendance vacancies.
• Supporting local authority decision-making to enable better support for our families. Being clear about what is and isn’t expected of our schools, when to use EWS support and how, to prioritise the time of attendance teams.
• Embedding the mantra that attendance is everyone’s responsibility through sharing of best practice and our messaging– film, networks, updates and PD.

Growing and improving

• Supporting increased, effective capacity across 5 clusters - appointment and induction of new role, growing current capacity and developing an effective model of what good cluster support looks like.
• Developing a deeper understanding or how we use our time to collaborate at scale – download networks versus solution circles, empowering team members to support one another.

https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp17-01-v201701.pdf

https://direct.mit.edu/edfp/article/11/2/125/10241/Linking-Teacher-Quality-Student-Attendance-and

https://www.nber.org/papers/w19656

https://direct.mit.edu/edfp/article/11/2/125/10241/Linking-Teacher-Quality-Student-Attendance-and