TRUANCY


Here to stay: Ninety-six per cent of students at Passmores Academy in Essex have 100 per cent attendance


first signs of attendance issues, encouraging students to see the benefits of education and motivate them with rewards for good attendance, there are occasions where more serious action needs to be taken. We regularly issue spot fines to parents who fail to


work with us to ensure their child is in school, however these can be difficult to enforce. This is evidenced by the fact that parents were


issued with 32,641 penalty notices by schools and local authorities in 2010/11. However, of those issued, 7,902 went unpaid, while 5,727 were withdrawn. While the reported increase in truancy fines are


welcome and serve as a further deterrent to parents who fail to ensure their child attends school, the fines need to reflect the severity of the situation. For example, if a child is missing school as a result


Cracking down on truancy


Passmores Academy in Essex was the school immortalised in the recent Channel 4 television documentary Educating Essex. Headteacher Vic Goddard discusses how he deals with issues of truancy at the school


Union address: ATL The tyranny of lesson plans


Forcing staff to produce written lesson plans is


a major workload issue and quite often a waste of time, argues Dr Mary Bousted


OVER THE last decade, we have made numerous attempts to end the tyranny of the lesson plan. Or, as I prefer to call it, the written record of the lesson plan – because no professional would want to reach their classroom without a clear idea of what activities they want their pupils to undertake, for what purpose, and how these fit in a sequence of lessons. Early in their career teachers may well want


to write down some reminders, whereas more experienced staff will probably carry most of the information in their heads. But we believe that any record should be a matter


for individual teachers’ professional judgement – after all, it is the quality of the lesson that really makes a difference to children’s learning, not the quality of the plan. Why are we so concerned about this? Easy,


really. The way schools require staff to produce lesson plans is a major workload issue. We get inundated with complaints about it from our members.Headteachers up and down the land invent standard proformas to be completed. Don’t blame the heads, they fear their jobs could


be on the line if they don’t do this. Why? Because everyone knows that Ofsted has converted the lesson plan into a terror weapon – everyone except Ofsted, whose motto is “never explain, never apologise”. Over the years, my union has had this argument


with a succession of chief inspectors and ministers. The social partnership, between the education unions, employers and former government, had a couple of goes at it, but it has always come up against the same sticking point: after substantial pressure, Ofsted issued guidance to inspectors, but the guidance was as useful as an inflatable dartboard.


On one hand, inspectors were not supposed to


expect to see a plan for every lesson. On the other, they were supposed to expect to see one if they judged the lesson to be inadequate. And now, with the new inspection framework


(that’s the new one from January 2012, not the new, new one which is about to replace it), teachers are back to square one. Actually, we are at worse than square one.


Teachers are telling us that the pressure on them has reached unprecedented depths, as RAISEonline and Ofsted apply more turns of the screw. And the demand for lesson plans is greater than ever. Teachers resent it because it is work which


wastes their time without improving their practice. They are under huge pressure from excessive lesson observations, but at least observations are looking at the right bit, the execution not the plan. The lesson plan question starts to look like a


potential problem for the government, because the moment there is an economic upturn in the UK, discontented teachers could bolt for the door. But maybe, just maybe, help is at hand – and


from an unlikely source. As is often pointed out, our current schools minister, Nick Gibb, is a mixed blessing. But when I recently showed him a real lesson plan, from a real teacher in a real school, he reacted the way the real teacher had when told to complete it. You know the kind of thing, eight pages, and 13


tick boxes. The minister knows that it is pressure from Ofsted that makes teachers produce lesson plans, so he has had a conversation with the chief inspector. I await with interest the discussion which will


ensue between Ofsted, ministers, and the unions and hope against hope that finally, after all these years, we can bring about this substantial reduction in workload and stress for teachers. I don’t pretend this would be any kind of panacea


– after all, the problems caused by the current accountability systems are too deep seated for that. Our next target would have to be lesson


observation, with questions of who is observing, how often and for what purpose. But I can imagine the staffrooms of England


celebrating if the curse of the lesson plan was finally lifted.


• Dr Mary Bousted is the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. Visit www.atl.org.uk


F


or the first half of this school year, 96 per cent of the students at Passmores Academy achieved 100 per cent attendance. While we are extremely proud of this statistic, ensuring that students are happy at school and that it is a place they want to be is a never-


ending job – something that school staff must not lose sight of if they are to improve attendance rates.


First day contact with parents


The links between attendance and attainment are so huge that we cannot fail to ignore it and, as a result, we take a stern approach to attendance. We have a full-time education welfare officer to monitor and find solutions to serious attendance issues and have the relevant technologies in place to make the monitoring of attendance as efficient as possible. It is integral that, if a child is absent from school,


first day contact is made with their parent or carer to discover the reason why. We use online registers and automated technologies to ensure this, meaning there is no room for human error and that we are not restricted by an individual’s working hours. These technologies also guarantee that parents are


contacted relentlessly via automated phone messages, text message or email until a suitable reason for the absence has been provided. Not only does this make the parent more accountable and provide them with a deterrent for allowing their child to be off school, it also enables school staff to monitor attendance quickly and easily and do their job to ensure that students are kept safe.


Parents can call my mobile


In order for school staff to make sure that students are not taking unauthorised absences, they need to have the support of parents or carers, who are ultimately responsible for their child’s safety and wellbeing. For this to happen there needs to be optimum levels of communication between school and parents and, while the methods that we use complement each other and ensure that there is little wriggle room for any unauthorised absences, parents need to feel that they can talk to us in person. We strive to offer an environment where parents


feel like they can approach the school and to reflect this, we list personal emails on our website and promote interaction between tutors and parents. We reassure parents that we are approachable


via any means of communication – for example, my mobile number is freely available to parents should they need to discuss any issues with me directly. Likewise, we need to know parents’ preferred


methods of communication to ensure that there is a constructive relationship in which both parties are looking out for the best interests of the pupil. If a parent has reading or writing difficulties or is hard of hearing then we need to know to contact them via their preferred method. Some unauthorised absences could be easily


explained but if a parent is unable to write down the information or speak to people over the phone then the absence is not accounted for. It is down to us to make sure that these preferred methods of communication are well-known among school staff.


Dealing with hard-to-reach parents


Having a positive relationship with parents is something that we continually work to achieve in order to assist in maintaining high levels of attendance. However, there will always be some hard-to-reach parents. While we do our best to intervene at the


12 SecEd • April 19 2012


of a term-time holiday, are the fines going to reflect the amount of money a family would save by taking a holiday in term time? If not, the fine is irrelevant as parents will still be saving money by taking their children out of school.


No to term-time holidays


Term-time holidays are never authorised at Passmores. We believe that the clear link between attendance and attainment speaks for itself and question why a parent would want to damage their child’s education. While we understand that the current economic


climate makes saving money more important, parents must change their perspectives: if you cannot afford to go to Spain in the summer, go to Blackpool until circumstances change. As well as this, it is down to the government to tackle the business side to ensure there is limited variation on holiday pricing. Besides, teachers are forced to accept the price increases too and parents would not react well if we decided to take two weeks out of school to benefit from cheaper holidays.


Children who want to attend


While we implement as many methods as possible to tackle truancy, we also feel that it is important to create an ethos that makes children want to be in school. It is vital to encourage constructive relationships between students so we try to place students in the same tutor group as their siblings to help familiarise the tutor with the family. Each pupil also has a learning partner from one of the years above to help develop their social skills and encourage them to look out for one another’s best interests. We want students to feel safe and happy here and we do so by creating a support network and making school a welcoming environment where students feel valued and motivated to achieve. Moving to a state-of-the-art new building has


offered us a secure site with a complete stay-on-site policy, preventing students from attending school in the morning and leaving at lunchtime, for example. It has also enabled us to offer a catering service that runs from 7am to 8:30pm meaning that parents can drop their children at school early in the morning or pick them up later in the evening with the assurance that they have arrived safely, eradicating the need for students to make their own way to school. Working to improve attendance is an on-going


challenge.The implementation of relevant technologies and best possible communication has helped us to reduce the rates of unauthorised absences significantly. However, if you can provide the kind of environment that students want to be in, you have less truancy issues and the minority become easier to deal with.


SecEd


• Vic Goddard is headteacher of Passmores Academy in Harlow, Essex. Passmores uses Truancy Call, a parent notification system from Contact Group.


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