Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to help ensure that students who are (a) not in school and (b) not in school regularly have access to support from (i) their school, (ii) the local authority and (iii) a virtual head.

Regular attendance at school is vital for children’s education, wellbeing and long-term development. The department’s new attendance guidance makes clear that attendance is everyone’s business, and that the department expects schools, trusts and local authority services to work together to improve attendance by providing the right support to families. In particular, the guidance aims to improve the consistency of support provided to pupils and families across the country. The department is looking to put the guidance on a statutory footing as soon as parliamentary time allows.

As the guidance sets out, schools are expected to develop and maintain a whole school culture which promotes the benefits of excellent attendance. Schools are expected to use attendance data to identify pupils who need additional support, appoint a senior leader with responsibility for attendance, build strong relationships with families, and put in place support to remove any barriers to attendance that have been identified.

Local authorities are also expected to hold termly conversations with all schools in their area to discuss pupils or groups of pupils who may need additional support to attend school. Where the reasons for absence are complex this may involve referrals to wider services, such as for pupils with long term medical conditions or Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Schools and local authorities are also required to agree a joint attendance improvement plan for every severely absent pupil, which is those who miss 50% or more of their education.

Local authorities are also expected to monitor and improve the attendance of children with a social worker through their virtual school head. Virtual schools should regularly monitor attendance for children with a social worker, set aspirational attendance targets for them, work across children’s social care services to ensure that all social workers understand the importance of attendance and ensure that this is reflected in child protection plans.

Alongside the clearer and stronger expectations about support that are set out in guidance, the department also has:

• A team of expert attendance advisers working with every local authority in the country to ensure that they are meeting all the key expectations.
• A new £15 million investment to expand attendance mentors to provide direct one to one support for individual pupils and their families.
• A programme of 32 school attendance hubs sharing effective practice with around 2000 schools.
• A daily attendance data project which aims to give schools, trusts and local authorities access to live data to enable them to identify need early and intervene.