Nottinghamshire Schools Portal

Practical ideas for challenging and improving attendance

You can download and print the attendance checklist for schools and structured conversation with a parent about their child's attendance at school [Word]

Checklist for schools

1. First day telephone calls/home visits questioning reason for absence and offering advice/supportive challenge
2. Letters sent to all parents share attendance concern
3. Have you spoken to the form tutor/head of year/pastoral manager?
4. Has someone spoken to the Young person to establish the reason/hear their voice?(age /ability dependent)
5. Have you met with the parents/carers and asked why the child isn’t attending school? Do these reasons match with the reason the child provided?
6. Have family circumstances been considered and have you considered with the family what support may help them at this time? Have any referrals to other agencies been offered?
7. If regularly late, has the school start time been shared with parents. Have you provided them with an alarm clock/used a sticker chart etc.
   Would the child benefit from attending breakfast club to ensure they are on school site on time each day? Would being met at the school gate help?
8. Checked to see if siblings are having the same absences. Have you contacted the school the siblings attend?
9. Have you spoken to other staff members to ascertain any other reasons for absence? Look at the patterns on ‘by-lesson attendance’, and if patterns are evident speak to those teachers.
10. Is the child a Young Carer, and is this having an impact on their attendance?
11. Consider if there are any unmet learning needs
12. Is English the second language for this family? Have letters and meetings been translated to allow fair access to school concerns for parents?
13. If EHCP in place are the outcomes being supported, when was this last reviewed?
14. Has the child’s health been considered, have you received any medical evidence
15. If external services are involved has a meeting taken place? E.g., TAF, CIN. If there is a lead professional from EHCM, YOS, CAMHS or CSC they should be consulted before an enforcement referral is made.
16. Where absence is attributed to anxiety or young persons mental health have support mechanism been put in place e.g.  ARNA, ATTEND, MHST

Holding a structured conversation with a parent about their child’s attendance at school

Hello [Parent’s name].

• I am [caller’s name] from [school name]. How are you doing today?
• I’m calling because, just like you, we want to do all we can to be sure [child’s name] is successful in school and one way we can help make this happen is to be sure [s/he] gets to school each day.
• When [child’s name] misses school [s/he] also misses valuable learning time and this can make [her/him] fall behind in [her/his] school work.
• Our attendance records show that [child’s name] has missed [number] days of school.
• Sometimes these absences add up before we know it so I thought I’d call to see if you might be able to help us out.
• How can we work together to get [child’s name] to school each day and on time? Give parent time to talk; parent may begin to talk about ways the parent can do things differently do get child to school. Open discussion: depending on how the conversation is going and how open the parent is, the caller may want to add a comment about how we all face daily pressures, and we want to help support you any way we can
• We would like to invite you to a meeting in school to discuss any barriers to attendance and how we can help as a school. If there are multiple support needs and you consent to support, we would like to discuss referring your family for Early Help Support. This will include a full assessment leading to a robust plan of support.
• If you don’t wish to consent to support and the unauthorised absences continue, we may need to make an enforcement only referral to the Local Authority. This is because we have a statutory duty to work with the LA to enforce school attendance. We obviously wish to avoid this option and hope to work together to improve your child’s attendance.
• If (in the future) your child is absent due to illness, we ask that you provide medical evidence so that the absence can be authorised by school.
• School registers close (half an hour?) after the start of each session. If your child arrives after the registers have closed then they are accruing an unauthorised absence.
• My staff and I are here to help, and we look forward to working with you.
• Please don’t hesitate to let me know how we can be helpful to you and [child’s name] so [s/he] doesn’t miss more school.
• Thanks for taking time to talk today. I look forward to seeing [child’s name] soon

Send an attendance certificate home and consider summarising your conversation in a letter.