Working together to improve school attendance

Thank you for your continued effort and hard work around improving school attendance. The latest validated attendance data for Kent schools during the Autumn 2023 (see below) demonstrates significant improvements, in particular an improvement in persistent absence in all settings and closing the gap by 1.7% against the national average.

As you will be aware, the Working together to improve school attendance guidance becomes statutory on Monday 19 August, although officially becomes active from the first day of term of your school’s new academic year. Whilst the guidance remains broadly similar, it continues to shine a spotlight on ‘support first’ and recognises that attendance is ‘everyone’s business.’ A brief summary of changes include:

• Expectations on daily data sharing - share your daily school attendance data. If your school has not registered, please do so by the end of term as this is a mandatory requirement for all schools across the country.
• Clarification of the expectations of schools’ senior attendance champions.
• ‘Parenting contracts’ for attendance to be renamed ‘attendance contracts’.
• Targeting Support Meetings expectations:
  • Attendance levels below national average for phase - three meetings per school year.
  • Attendance levels above the national average for phase - one  meeting per school year.
• Updates on attendance and absent codes. A useful pre-recorded DfE webinar
• New pupil and deletion returns - schools must notify the local authority when a pupil’s name is added to or deleted from the school admission register outside of standard transition time in line with the updated legislation - The School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024.
• Attendance returns - schools to provide the local authority with the names and addresses of all pupils of compulsory school age who fail to attend school regularly or have been absent for a continuous period of ten school days where their absence has been recorded with one or more of the codes statistically classified as unauthorised (G, N, O, and/or U). See the link above.
• Sickness returns - schools to provide the local authority with the full name and address of all pupils of compulsory school age who have been recorded with code I (illness) and who the school has reasonable grounds to believe will miss 15 days consecutively or cumulatively because of sickness. See the link above.
• National Framework for issuing penalty notices.  

To ensure schools and the local authority are compliant with the new guidance, there will be a number of changes to current operational procedures these include:

• Data collection - additional pathways are currently being designed to ensure schools can inform the local authority of the above attendance and sickness returns.
• Health Needs policy - the policy is designed to provide clarity on the arrangements which will apply when a school pupil in Kent is not able to attend school for health or medical reasons. In particular, the policy provides information for all stakeholders including the local authority, schools, parents and pupils on their responsibilities and collaborative working. This will ensure that all pupils have access to suitable education and receive appropriate support in light of their health/medical needs. There is currently a public consultation on the health needs policy which finishes on Sunday 28 July.
• Penalty Notice Code of Conduct – there is currently a consultation with schools on the KCC Code of Conduct which was emailed to all schools on either Friday 21 or Monday 24 June. The consultation runs until Friday 5 July. Please contact Alison Taylor, Attendance Enforcement Team Leader, by emailing Alison.Taylor2@kent.gov.uk for further information. It would be helpful if you could enter “Penalty Notice Consultation” in the subject line of your email so it is prioritised.
• The Attendance Enforcement Team will be hosting Q and A sessions on Teams for Senior Leaders and any other staff you feel relevant to attend on Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 July and in early September (date TBC). Invite links will be sent through PIAS School Liaison Officers.

Please note any Penalty Notice requests for absence (holidays) this term must be submitted by Wednesday 31 July to enable changes to our payment platform to be implemented. Unfortunately, penalty notices for general unauthorised absences and unauthorised lates can no longer be submitted as there are not enough days available to set up monitoring periods before end of term.

Throughout the coming months, the PIAS team will be working to update the resources for schools on the Kelsi website, including:

• School attendance handbook
• Attendance guidance checklist for schools
• Attendance policy checklist for schools
• Parent leaflet.

There are other useful resources available regarding school attendance, including:

• Ofsted webinar - Securing good attendance and tackling persistent absence
• DfE webinars - DfE Sector Comms
• Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) resources - Supporting attendance

Thank you for continued support.

Simon Smith
Head of PIAS