Attendance Support and Development Programme

An online school attendance training programme to upskill school staff with attendance responsibilities.

Increasing levels of pupil absence is one of the most worrying questions in our education system.

Government figures show that nearly 1 in 5 children are persistently absent from school, missing days, weeks, even years of their education affecting their future life chances.

It is against this backdrop that we have developed this specialised school attendance training programme for school staff.

What is the Attendance Support and Development Programme?

The Attendance Support and Development Programme is a specialised school attendance training programme to upskill school staff with attendance responsibilities. It includes thorough, in depth training and supervision of participants. The programme is designed by experts to support and develop the skills of school staff with attendance responsibilities with specific learning outcomes on key themes including attendance, whole family support, early intervention and parental engagement.

The main goal of the programme is to equip participants with the skills, knowledge, and confidence needed to address the complex needs of children, young people and families by uncovering and understanding the underlying causes of persistent and severe absence.

Who is it for?

This Attendance Support and Development Programme is tailored for and targeted at those delivering frontline attendance support to children and families including school staff from the pastoral team and those delivering family support with attendance responsibilities.

Graduates of the programme will add capacity and skills to the work of their school’s Senior Attendance Champion enriching the whole school approach to attendance in line with best practice as well as complementing safeguarding and the work of the designated Safeguarding Lead and making a lasting impact on school attendance, behaviour, and engagement.

The programme is most useful for schools with a persistent absence rate of 10% and above where families might benefit from a more intense, nuanced approach to tackling high absence.

Programme Overview

As part of its approach to improving attendance the Department for Education’s latest school attendance guidance ‘Working together to improve attendance’ has been updated and becomes statutory from August 2024.

The new guidance requires schools and local authorities to embed a support first, family centric approach to tackling absence. Under the new guidance schools are required to appoint a School Attendance Champion and publish the school’s attendance policy.

As advisors to the Government on the guidance, School-Home Support’s one year in- depth school attendance training programme will support schools who are aiming for best practice in holistic whole family support, early intervention strategies and a consent driven partnership approach to working with parents/carers.

Our whole family support model and approach to tackle attendance has been recommended by the Centre for Social Justice and Parliament as one proven-solution to improving low attendance in schools effectively.

What to expect from our

school attendance training programme

Our school attendance training programme will start in the Autumn term 2024 and it will run for one year. It will be delivered by experienced School-Home Support attendance experts.

It will consist of:

Introductory sessions with the school’s SLT and the participant/s
Interactive training sessions on safeguarding, attendance, parental engagement, economic wellbeing and working with SEND children and families
Job shadowing of an experienced School-Home Support practitioner in their school
Direct observations of the participant in their school
Monthly individual supervision to provide a dedicated space for the participant to reflect on their case work and develop better understanding and skills of professional practice
Attendance lead network meetings to bring together programme participants in different regions to share learnings and best practice
Personalised guidance and support via regular one-to-ones with an School-Home Support attendance expert
Guided self-evaluation and reflection exercises to inform the participant’s practice

Ready to take our school attendance training programme?

Contact us to receive more information about the Attendance Support and Development Programme and how to enrol.

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School-Home Support attendance experts

School-Home Support Attendance experts are specialists in attendance strategies with extensive experience in facilitating training for school staff. With a deep understanding of attendance challenges and proven track record in supporting schools, our coordinators bring invaluable insights and expertise to our programme.

We are national experts in support first, family centred approaches to tackling absence as recommended in the new Government guidance ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ (applies from 19 August 2024). Our approach has been highlighted as Best Practice in Parliament’s Inquiry into Tackling Persistent Absence.

But we know we can’t reach all the families who need our help. We must share what we know with schools so more children can benefit. As such we’re responding by funding more practitioners to work directly with families on barriers to school.

Find out more about our practitioners service

Georgia shared her experience with our school attendance training programme

The programme has been very informative and beneficial so far. Amy has provided brilliantly supportive supervision whilst also challenging my practice and thoughts to push me to improve. I have found the network meetings to be especially useful. As a Head of Year, having the chance to liaise with senior leaders and attendance leads has given me insight into managing situations effectively and has shown me a collaborative approach to improving attendance goes a long way.

Our session on seeking support / materials for families from external sources such as charities was particularly eye opening as I had not come across many of these avenues before.

I feel I have a greater understanding of issues surrounding attendance and have a deeper knowledge of a child centric approach to engaging families, especially in our context.

Thank you, Amy, for all your support and passion in supporting our young people, it has been brilliant to work with you!

Georgia Cassidy, Star Salford Academy

Hear from our participants

It’s not until you start looking at the cases like this that you realise what you might not have done/tried” (In relation to supervision)

Jean Rowell, Olive academy

I’ve enjoyed the sessions – they’ve been very informative and have given me a different insight on engagement.

Chris Wawrzyn, Oulder Hill Leadership Academy

Ready to improve low attendance in your school?

Reach out to us today to discover more about the Attendance Support and Development Programme and how you can enrol.