A new Improving Attendance Toolkit from School-Home Support

A toolkit to help schools tackle persistent absence.

Improving Attendance Toolkit November 2023
Twitter posts - 2024-02-05T143710.171

There are currently 1.7 million children persistently absent from school, missing weeks, months or even years of their education and severely affecting their future life chances.

School leaders know more than most that there are no silver bullets or quick fixes to solving high levels of absence. Tackling the school attendance crisis will require a huge multi-agency, holistic approach over a sustained period of time.

School-Home Support have developed a new toolkit to rise to this challenge and provide guidance for school leaders on developing their school attendance policy, with a particular focus on building strong relationships with families to understand and tackle barriers to good school attendance.

Supporting schools to implement new Government Guidance

In response to high levels of absence, the Department for Education (DfE) issued new guidance entitled Working Together to Improve School Attendance in September 2022, with the aim of helping schools, trusts, governing bodies and local authorities work together to maintain high levels of school attendance. It helpfully clarifies expectations and responsibilities of joint working at local level. We welcome the guidance and the value it places on improving attendance through a collaborative, support-led approach.

The new toolkit is set out to help schools understand and implement the Government guidance as well as contributing to the current knowledge surrounding best practice in working with families to improve attendance.

How to access the new Improving Attendance Toolkit

Sign up for our free School-Home Support membership to get exclusive access to the full toolkit direct to your inbox.

As well as access to the toolkit, our members receive termly bulletins with updates and the latest education news, plus can join the School-Home Support Forum where members discuss issues with expert practitioners and peers.