Attendance Resources and Network Information

Attendance Network Meetings

The Education Safeguarding Team will be leading termly Attendance Network Meetings which allow school leaders to keep up to date with key information and share best practice.  The meetings comprise of a meeting for all schools to share developments and present sessions relating to school attendance.  Consultation sessions are also available, which are slots of 20 minutes to enable schools to have discussions around individual children and/or specific issues affecting you around achieving / maintaining excellent levels of attendance.

We have scheduled the dates below for you to be able to attend a virtual meeting for all schools, together with consultation slots to give individual schools an opportunity to meet with us and ask questions about issues you may need to explore so that we can support you with your individual school's attendance practice.

Please visit our Skills4Bradford webpage to to book a slot at the Attendance Network Meeting - https://skills4bradford.co.uk/Services/5180

NB: Consultation slots can be booked during the Attendance Network Meeting by colleagues who have attended the Attendance Network Meeting.

Friday 24th June 2022:

Firstly, thank you to everyone who attended on Friday, it was great to see so many of you, and we really appreciate the contributions you made to help us understand the challenges you face.  I hope you got as much out of it as the Attendance team and I did, we especially valued the time that Diane McConnell spent with us to talk about the new DfE attendance guidance.

You should have hopefully received a link signposting you to our feedback form, but please let me know if you have any difficulties accessing the form.  We’d also appreciate any ideas or suggestions you have about future attendance network meetings.  I’ve been asked to consider holding the next attendance meeting on an afternoon rather than a morning next time, which we will do unless there are lots of objections to this.  We’ve also been asked to spend some time in September looking at the Staged Intervention Approach, which we will weave into the next meeting too.

Please find the slides from Friday at the bottom of this section  

Use of Absence Codes for Leave During Term Time.

There may have been a bit of confusion about this on Friday.  Just to be clear that schools may only use 20 sessions / 10 days of “H” codes (authorised leave), which reflects current legislation that only allows headteachers to grant a leave of absence for up to 10 days only for “Exceptional Circumstances”.  Code G should be used either when a period of leave exceeds the 10 days of absence granted by the school (as more than 10 days leave cannot be granted/authorised), or for an unauthorised leave of absence.

Open consultation - School registers and national thresholds for legal intervention

The DfE are seeking views on new regulations for keeping school registers and draft thresholds for legal interventions to improve consistency across England.  This consultation is being held here - https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-attendance-policy-and-strategy-team/school-registers-and-national-thresholds-for-legal/

Share your daily school attendance data

The DfE are trialling collecting daily attendance data from schools. Collecting data daily will give schools, local authorities and multi-academy trusts (MATs) access to more timely pupil level attendance data. This collection will not add to a schools’ workload. More here, including how to sign up - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/share-your-daily-school-attendance-data

Voices of England’s Missing Children - The findings of the Children’s Commissioner’s Attendance Audit

The Children’s Commissioner’s Attendance Audit set out with an overarching goal that every child should be in school every day, supported and ready to learn. Every child has the right to a fantastic education. To achieve this, every child needs to be identified and supported, no child should be unknown to the system, and the children’s commissioner has outlined Six Ambitions to Account for Every Child, ambitions that we share here in Bradford.

The report can be read here: https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/cc-voices-of-englands-missing-children-june-2022.pdf

Attendance Leaflets

We have produced a range of leaflets for schools in Bradford to use to support positive messages about attendance.  These can be downloaded by clicking on the links below:

School Attendance

Persistent Absence

Warning and Penalty Notices

Finally, we’ve updated our traded service offer to ensure that offer reflects our ability to support schools comply with the new statutory attendance duties for schools.  You can read more here: https://skills4bradford.co.uk/services/5180

Please feel free to provide any feedback or to ask any questions straight to us at Attendance@bradford.gov.uk

Presentations - Please click below to download:

Diane McConnell - DfE Attendance Advisor

Kate Hopton / John Leese - Education Safeguarding