School Attendance Support Team
A specialist School Attendance Support Team working with schools, children and their families to raise achievement by promoting high levels of school attendance. The service is compliant with the current attendance legislation, statutory guidance and other relevant codes of practice, providing a universal service to all schools free at the point of delivery which includes the following:
Communication and advice: regularly bring schools together to communicate messages, provide advice and share best practice between schools and trusts within the area. Including:
- Guidance on how partners will work together
- Named point of contact for each school
- Answering queries from school based staff
- Bringing schools together to share best practice
Targeting support meetings: hold termly conversations with schools, using their attendance data to identify pupils and cohorts at risk of poor attendance and agree targeted actions and access to services for those pupils. Including:
- Meeting at least termly with each school in the local authority area (either through an existing meeting such as a team around the school, or as a standalone attendance led meeting).
- Signposting schools to relevant services and voluntary sector partners.
- Agreeing joint action plans for severely absent pupils (where there are out of school barriers).
- Agreeing joint actions for persistently absent pupils (where necessary).
- Agreeing any legal action to be taken forward.
Multi-disciplinary support for families
- Signposting and providing access to existing support systems where appropriate – including early help, social care, SEND etc.
- Advising the family’s lead practitioner on any attendance elements of the family’s plan
- Acting as lead professional in the single family plan where an LA team is the most appropriate to do so (e.g. a school admissions issue).
Legal intervention:
- Taking forward attendance legal intervention (using the full range of parental responsibility measures) where voluntary support has not been successful or engaged with.
Attendance advice phone:
- Telephone advice line for education settings 3pm to 4.30pm Monday to Friday during term time.
CPD:
- Generic training for school staff on undertaking home visits and attendance casework.
Access to online attendance resources