Views & Opinion Reducing absenteeism and expulsions – we can offer
solutions for the new Education Minister Comment by JAMES ROACH, Chief Executive Officer at the Inclusive Multi Academy Trust
For those of us working in education, recent government figures showing record highs of suspensions and exclusions came as no surprise. We are all working with children who are facing mental health challenges due to the effects of poverty, trauma and adverse childhood experiences and a growing number of children with special educational needs. These are just some of the factors contributing to the attendance crisis – all issues that have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and its lasting impacts.
Poor attendance doesn’t just affect educational outcomes; it also puts children at increased risk of social exclusion as well as violence and exploitation. I believe a nurture-based approach can help to reverse the growing trend of persistent absenteeism. It’s a solution that’s had huge success in our family of schools.
We were the first school to receive nurtureuk’s National Nurturing Schools Award in 2017 and the first trust to do so in 2021. A nurture- based approach has helped us buck the national exclusion trend of the last decade.
Principles of nurture
Nurture is a whole-school concept based on six principles: 1. Children’s learning is understood developmentally - we use nurtureuk’s Boxall Profile Online to understand and support every child’s social, emotional and mental health needs. It gives us individual scores for the children and mass data across the Trust as a whole. We all profile reading, writing and maths, so why not behaviour? 2. The classroom offers a safe base - aimed at supporting the development of children’s relationships with each other and with staff.
The classroom or nurture space has quiet zones and reflections of home.
3. The importance of nurture for the development of wellbeing - everything is verbalised with an emphasis on the adults engaging with pupils in reciprocal shared activities.
4. Language is a vital means of communication - informal opportunities for talking and sharing are just as important as more formal lessons teaching language skills. This enables words to be used instead of actions to express feelings. 5. All behaviour is communication - according to the DfE, the most common reason for suspensions and permanent exclusions in the 2022/23 academic year was “persistent disruptive behaviour”. A nurture-based approach recognises that the outward behaviour is often the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and we need to look for clues about the real cause before we can work on encouraging children to express their emotions appropriately.
6. The importance of transitions in children’s lives - helping the child to transition with carefully managed preparation and support. This can be small - lesson to lesson, or a significant move such as changing year groups.
Improving pupil wellbeing and social and emotional skills is integral to improving attendance. Schools must be welcoming, inclusive places where children want to be and parents want to send them. We need the government to commit to an inclusive, relational approach to education as set out in this open letter to politicians before the general election. That means working with children, families and schools to adopt a nurture-based approach in schools right across the country.
Solving the school attendance crisis with a supportive culture
Comment by ALI GURYEL, Executive Chairman and CEO of Bromcom
Since the relaxation of restrictions imposed during the height of the pandemic, there have been concerns around an increase of pupils with high levels of absence. In fact, most schools (70%) have seen an increase in pupil absences over the past two years, according to a survey of 498 UK schools. The research shows there is general agreement that the damage done by the pandemic to children’s mental health and well-being, the relationships between schools and parents, and the overall culture of school attendance, will take years to fix.
A major contributing factor to absences is term time holidays, The research found that 68% of schools have seen an increase in absence due to holidays taken in term time. Whilst a new national framework is to be introduced by the DfE in August 2024 - to increase fines for five or more days of unauthorised absence - of the schools surveyed, 80% said the increase will make no difference and families will continue to book holidays during term time.
Also, many schools have seen a drop in attendance on Fridays, prompting schools to believe the perception among parents is that children no longer need to go into school every day. One school said the most impactful driver of the absence problem is the “seismic shift” in many parents’ attitudes to schools. Schools must demonstrate an effort to understand families’ concerns, but also act with professional curiosity to remove barriers to learning and reduce absence. A tool that is being implemented by schools to tackle the persistent attendance problem is management information systems (MIS). The
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www.education-today.co.uk
research found that 74% of schools agree or significantly agree that their MIS provides the reporting tools and data to help track and manage student attendance.
Parent portals within a modern cloud-based MIS can provide real- time data on a child’s attendance via a web browser or app and can make an enormous difference in the quality of communications and parent satisfaction. This transparency helps parents stay informed and encourages them to take an active role in ensuring their child attends school regularly. It can help to address parental disengagement and allows for improved academic outcomes, and increased satisfaction among students, parents, and staff alike.
Parents are granted access to attendance, behaviour, assessment and student reports, and important communications. Crucially, any potential truancy problems can be detected early and prevented. Through their portal, parents can access realtime attendance history and current lesson data. They are also kept up-to-date as to the attendance of their child for any period and they can see any potential areas for engagement with their child or the school.
Parent engagement is vital to improving attendance, and fostering positive attitudes towards school policy is likely to result in consistent student attendance. Moreover, what will make a difference over time will be the dedication of schools in rebuilding relationships, restoring confidence, fostering a supportive culture, raising expectations, and using their systems and data in increasingly innovative ways to keep them on track.
The full findings of the survey can be found in the whitepaper entitled ‘Solving the post-pandemic school attendance crisis’.
September 2024
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