Improving attendance: good practice for schools and multi-academy trusts
Schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs) share their different techniques for improving attendance rates in their settings.
Training sessions for new attendance guidance
Adam Luke, Department for Education (DfE) School Attendance Policy lead, outlines what the new attendance guidance means for schools and academy trusts.
What the new attendance guidance means for schools and academy trusts
Jayne Lowe, DfE Attendance Adviser, explains what makes an effective school-level attendance policy.
Setting up an effective school attendance policy
Star Academies share how they ensure the attendance register is completed consistently across their schools. Their presentation also covers the trust’s day-to-day processes to monitor, follow up and improve attendance.
Attendance coding practice and day-to-day processes
Sapientia Education Trust share how they work with families, local authorities and other partners effectively to maximise attendance.
Working with families, local authorities and other partners effectively to maximise attendance
Diverse Academies share how they use governance to support better attendance across their trust and academies.
Effective governance to support better attendance
Star Academies share how they analyse absence and attendance data to target and monitor improvement efforts. This presentation also includes a demonstration of the daily attendance reports that all schools can register for and access for free.
School attendance guidance training webinar – analysing absence and attendance data
Whole trust and school approaches to improving attendance webinars
Primary
Aaron Wright, Executive Headteacher, and Luke Renwick, Headteacher, of Brook House Primary School, share how they have created a culture of excellent attendance through a pastoral approach that has significantly reduced the number of pupils who are persistently absent.
A pastoral approach – Brook House Primary School
Kelly Moore, Principal at Ormiston Meadows Academy, shares the strategies they have implemented with various cohorts of pupils to significantly reduce persistent absence across the school.
Reducing persistent absence – Ormiston Meadows Academy
Secondary
Michael Robson, Executive Principal of North Shore Academy, shares their approach for managing and improving attendance in schools in the Northern Education Trust, including work they did during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Managing and improving attendance in a multi-academy trust - Northern Education Trust
Jamie Stubbs, Assistant Headteacher with responsibility for inclusion, safeguarding and attendance at St Thomas More Catholic Academy, shares how they have managed to improve attendance levels to above national averages.
Improving attendance to above national averages – St Thomas More Catholic Academy
Diane Henson, Headteacher at Wheelers Lane Technology College, shares the strategies they’ve successfully implemented to improve attendance for pupils at their secondary boys’ school.
Successful attendance implementation – Wheelers Lane Technology College
Sue Huntley, Deputy Principal of Studio West, shares how they use their curriculum and other strategies to improve attendance in their 11-to-19 studio school.
Improving attendance in a studio school – Studio West
Special and alternative provision (AP)
Wayne Askham, Head of the Abbey School, shares how they use their curriculum, incentives and rewards, and other strategies to improve attendance in their 5-to-19 special school.
Using curriculum, incentives and rewards – Abbey School
Matthew Rooney, Principal of St Giles School, shares the actions they have taken to reduce the attendance gap between their 3-to-18 special school and other mainstream settings nationally.
Closing the attendance gap – St Giles School
Bromley Trust Academy Alternative Provision share the actions they take at trust, school and pupil level to raise attendance significantly above national alternative provision (AP) averages.
Raising AP attendance averages – Bromley Trust Academy
Trust
Michelle O’Dell shares an insight into her role as Attendance Intervention Manager for John Taylor Multi-Academy Trust. This includes strategies for monitoring and improving attendance across all the schools in the trust.
Using an Attendance Intervention Manager to improve rates – John Taylor Multi-Academy Trust
Ofsted
Susan Morris-King, one of His Majesty’s Inspectors and Ofsted’s National Lead for behaviour and attendance, reports on the main findings of Ofsted’s ‘Securing good attendance and tackling persistent absence’ report.
Ofsted findings on securing good attendance and tackling persistent absence
Related case studies and resources
Schools have shared their techniques for:
- managing attendance effectively
- texting parents: our key to success in tackling absence
- working with the community to tackle the root cause of absence
A rapid evidence review of attendance interventions is available on the Education Endowment Foundation website.
The Behavioural Insights Team have produced a guide on how schools can use text messages to clearly communicate pupils’ attendance levels to parents.
This is based on the results of a successful pilot programme in Bristol and includes examples of the style of communication schools can use to help boost attendance.
Updates to this page
Published 1 February 2022Last updated 19 April 2023 + show all updates
-
Added a link to further information about attendance interventions and removed 2 now-redundant links.
-
The 'School attendance guidance training webinar – analysing absence and attendance data' has been added.
-
Added the 'Effective governance which supports stronger attendance' webinar. Removed the 'Future webinars' section as it was out of date.
-
Added links to additional webinars and updated the list of future webinars.
-
Updated webinars and future webinar dates.
-
Added links to additional webinars from different types of school including special schools, a primary school and a technology college. Also updated the schedule of future webinars DfE is planning.
-
Added links to additional webinars and a schedule of future webinars DfE is planning.
-
First published.