Government Initiatives to Support School Attendance

With the recent announcement of the trials of Regional Attendance Action Alliance’s, this blog explores government initiatives and further recommendations to support their ‘raising attendance’ agenda.

Attendance Action Alliance – Key Priorities

The Attendance Action Alliance (AAA) is a government initiative aimed at ‘raising attendance’ within schools. While it is a separate initiative from EBSA Horizons, one of the Attendance Action Alliance’s key priorities for the next two years is ‘to help to improve attendance by using supporting systems and services to address underlying drivers of absence, particularly for vulnerable cohorts’.

EBSA Horizons provides schools and other professionals targeted training, resources and strategies to support children and young people who experience difficulties attending school, complementing broader initiatives like the Attendance Action Alliance. It is hoped that, by integrating something like EBSA Horizons within the Attendance Action Alliance approaches, we can pave the way for sustainable change by addressing the root causes of attendance difficulties.

Attendance Hubs

The UK government launched an initiative to improve attendance in schools, called the Attendance Hub Initiative. The program is led by schools with high attendance records, which share practical ideas with other primary, secondary, alternative provision and special schools in England. The program aims to reduce absence rates and improve children’s education, wellbeing and long-term development.

Lead hub schools have been set up to share approaches to improving attendance with other schools. It will be important that it includes a clear understanding and compassionate approach towards children and young people experiencing difficulties attending school, work effectively with wider services where there are complex reasons for absence, and using data to identify pupils at risk of EBSA, and to intervene early.

Attendance Mentor Programme

The Attendance Mentor Programme is a part of the UK government’s strategy to improve attendance rates in schools and boost pupils’ attainment and welfare. The programme is delivered by children’s charity Barnardo’s and aims to support pupils who are persistently or severely absent from school. The mentors work directly with 1,665 such children and their families across Knowsley, Doncaster, Stoke-on-Trent, and Salford to understand and overcome the barriers to attendance. The programme is being expanded in areas of the country with the highest levels of pupil absence. 

Toolkit for Schools: Communicating with Families to Support Attendance

Schools are dedicated to supporting strong attendance for children and young people and many schools have allocated more of their staff time to support children and young people who experience attendance difficulties. It is clear that the pandemic impacted on many children’s attendance, and schools are facing more challenges than ever in supporting children to be in school. The Communication Toolkit provide recommendations in which school can communicate with parents around attendance.

The intricate relationship between school, attendance difficulties and parental involvement has been a subject of numerous studies, revealing a complex and often challenging dynamic. Research by Archer, Filmer-Sankey, & Fletcher-Campbell (2003) underscored the prevalent belief among Local Authority and school professionals that 'home factors,' such as parenting styles and socio-economic status, were pivotal in originating school refusal behaviours. Although historical, the literature consistently suggests that feelings of ‘blame’ and ‘judgement’ felt by parents continue to exist in the context of EBSA (Sawyer, 2023; Browne, 2019; Nuttal & Woods, 2013).

The literature consistently advocates for a multi-systemic, collaborative approach towards supporting EBSA, aligning with Bronfenbrenner’s ‘Eco systemic’ Theory, and cautions against a generalised 'one size fits all' strategy. The Department for Education, acknowledging the necessity of a joint-systems approach, published guidance titled ‘Summary of responsibilities where a mental health issue is affecting attendance’ in February 2023, emphasising the imperative of involving parents in developing action plans to support attendance difficulties.

However, a discerning look reveals a dissonance between policy and practice. Parents, despite being recognised as crucial stakeholders in legislative and statutory guidance, often report feelings of ‘blame’ and ‘abandonment’ from professionals, indicating a gap in the actualisation of collaborative approaches. The parental voice, pivotal in understanding and addressing EBSA effectively, remains notably underexplored in research, hindering the evolution of truly effective, collaborative, and empathetic strategies and communication toolkits. Sawyer’s research on parental perspective of EBSA and has developed the SPIRAL framework. Drawn from her research the SPIRAL framework supports schools and external professionals when planning and implementing support for children who experience attendance difficulties, in the hope that parents and carers feel ‘included, supported and heard when addressing their child’s need’ (Sawyer, 2023).

In light of this, it becomes paramount to approach governmental toolkits for communicating with parents with a degree of caution and reflection. Ensuring that these toolkits and strategies are not merely tokenistic, but genuinely facilitate a supportive, non-judgemental, and collaborative environment for parents, is crucial for fostering effective multi-systemic approaches towards managing and supporting children and young peoples difficulties attending school.

See the Checklist for Attendance Tracking and Support  from EBSA Horizons.

EBSA Horizons School Staff Training

EBSA Horizons School Training is a comprehensive CPD course for School Staff, which develops understanding and skills (alongside a lot of resources) to support children and young people experiencing difficulties attending school. This course has been updated for 2023 with a new chapter -

Chapter 6:  The Systemic Change Model of EBSA

Find out more about EBSA Horizons School Training here and register your interest to receive 3 FREE resources from this course.

EBSA Horizons Educational Psychologist CPD

EBSA Horizons is a comprehensive CPD course for EPs, which develops understanding and skills (alongside a lot of resources) to support children and young people experiencing difficulties attending school. This course has been recently updated for 2023 with two new chapters -

Chapter 6:  Supporting Autistic CYP Experiencing EBSA

Chapter 7:  Entrenched EBSA

Find out more about EBSA Horizons here and register your interest to receive 3 FREE resources from this course.

References

Archer, T., Filmer-Sankey, C., & Fletcher-Campbell, F. (2003). School Phobia and School Refusal: Research into Causes and Remedies. NFER.

Browne, K. D. (2019). The nature of school refusal in adolescence: An exploratory study. Journal of Adolescence, 74, 135-144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2019.06.006

Nuttal, T., & Woods, K. (2013). Effective intervention for school refusal behaviour. Children & Society, 27(5), 416-426. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1099-0860.2011.00407.x

Department for Education. (2023). Summary of responsibilities where a mental health issue is affecting attendance. [Government Publication]. Link

Sawyer, R. (2022) Parents’ views on EBSNA: A solution-based exploration into successful reintegration. Link