Termly school/LA targeting support meetings
The ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance requires Local Authorities to offer termly targeting support meetings to schools. This will begin to roll out from September 2023. The purpose of these meetings is to support schools in managing pupil absence within their settings.
These meetings will be termly conversations between the Attendance Improvement Team and schools, using the schools attendance data to identify pupils and cohorts at risk of poor attendance and agree targeted actions and explore access to services for those pupils.
The DfE states that the purpose of this meeting is to work together as equal partners to:
- advise on the requirement for clear and transparent whole school attendance processes, policies and strategies which allow for the early identification of pupils with declining levels of attendance and ensure that supportive interventions are offered to enable pupils to return to regular, full-time attendance at school.
- to ensure that all Devon schools and academies have access to the most up-to-date government advice and guidance in respect of coding of absence and attendance reporting requirements (e.g., census returns, attendance returns to the DfE, etc.)
- to share good practice in relation to strategies which may be used to address absence, with a view to minimising the need for schools to require legal intervention (penalty notices/prosecution) via the Education Act 1996
- to encourage schools to take a multi-agency approach to addressing absence and providing a signposting service to inform schools about any services, organisations and/or agencies that may be able to offer support in this aim.
- to ensure there are attendance plans in place for all severely absent (less than 50%) pupils. Schools and AIO are expected to have agreed a joint approach for all severely absent pupils.
- to scrutinise available data to identify emerging local patterns of positive attendance improvement and ‘hotspots’, particularly around vulnerable groups, where attendance patterns appear to be declining, using this data to facilitate opportunities for schools to collaborate and network so that school-led improvement relationships may be formed, as appropriate.
- to facilitate networking and training opportunities for Attendance Officers, Attendance Leads and Headteachers which seek to promote local and national good practice and allow colleagues to share successful strategies which have enabled them to overcome barriers to regular attendance for their pupils.
- be available to provide advice to schools/parents in individual cases.
It is recommended that schools read the DfE fact sheet – targeting support meetings to get a deeper understanding of the what the meetings will likely start to look like.
The Attendance Improvement Team has put together an initial document outlining how these meeting are intended to be structured. It is expected that the structure of these meetings may well evolve as the process embeds itself. Currently the meetings are likely to follow the structure outlined in the DCC template for attendance targeting support meetings.
School meetings
Schools are expected to support and challenge patterns of absence. Effective school meetings are an important part of developing supportive relationships with families that allow the exploration of barriers to attendance. These meetings need to be well structured and purposeful in intent.
Schools also need to ensure that they are able to
- ask the right questions that get to the root of what is getting in the way for the pupil/family.
- evidence the meeting and their attempts to explore, understand and overcome (or mitigate) barriers and their impact upon pupil attendance.
Schools might find the School attendance meeting guide to be helpful when considering how they intend to build upon their relationships with families and how their meetings can be structured to support an improvement in pupil attendance.
To support schools in structuring and evidencing their family meetings, schools might find the following helpful