School escalation process
It is important that schools have an effective process for managing their pupil attendance concerns.
A good escalation process that is well communicated and well executed is incredibly valuable for schools when exploring, understanding and overcoming barriers to pupil attendance.
A suggested Attendance school escalation process has been put together for schools to consider when designing their own process for supporting/challenging pupil absence in their own settings
Data
Schools need to be able to access and analyse good pupil level and school level attendance data. Good data informs appropriate and effective practice. School Registers contain a wealth of attendance information that can help guide your school in the support/challenge that it delivers.
Schools should be comparing their school attendance data with Local and National Attendance Data. The DfE publishes it’s official validated National School Attendance Data 3 times a year. You will also find unvalidated and experimental fortnightly data available, although this is only experimental and NOT validated it is good indicative data that gives a flavour of what is happening nationally with attendance.
To support schools is managing attendance data, schools might find the Data target setting and analysis guide useful. Also as a suggestion, you can find an example of a spreadsheet version of a Simple attendance tracker that schools might find helpful.