Schools are to be assigned specific minimum attendance goals as part of initiatives to recoup learning lost during the pandemic. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson will unveil a roadmap for each school to enhance support for students returning to classrooms.
Nearly a third of schools struggle to enhance their attendance records. Starting this month, every school will receive AI-driven minimum attendance enhancement targets to ensure students are present at school and prepared for success.
The Attendance Baseline Improvement Expectation (ABIE) will be tailored to each school’s circumstances, considering factors such as location, student needs, and deprivation levels. Schools will be benchmarked against similar demographic schools, with progress not tied to formal accountability measures or disclosed to Ofsted.
Performance outcomes will guide targeted support efforts, including through Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams. Additionally, 36 new Attendance and Behavior Hubs are being launched to provide personalized assistance to students.
However, teaching unions have expressed reservations about the added pressure from the new targets on schools already facing challenges. Phillipson emphasized the importance of school attendance in fostering children’s opportunities and success, urging all schools to contribute to surpassing pre-pandemic attendance levels.
Before the pandemic, the overall absenteeism rate stood at 4.7%, rising to 7.6% in the 2021/22 academic year. The number of persistently absent students, those missing over 10% of school days, nearly doubled since the pandemic.
While the Labour party has overseen improvements, with more school days attended and fewer persistently absent pupils last year, the commitment is to return to pre-pandemic attendance levels.
School leaders’ union NAHT’s General Secretary, Paul Whiteman, emphasized that schools are already diligently working to boost attendance and that additional targets may not be beneficial. Pepe Di’Iasio from the Association of School and College Leaders echoed these sentiments, calling for practical resources and support rather than more directives from the government.
Di’Iasio suggested providing schools with dedicated attendance officers to address attendance challenges effectively, rather than burdening them with additional improvement targets. He emphasized that schools often face these challenges alone, without adequate resources or staffing, and that setting new improvement targets could add to their existing pressures without resolving the underlying issues.