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.

The schedule for 2025-26 dates will be added below.

Previous Attendance Network Meetings

Tuesday 17th June 2025.

This meeting took place on line, with presentations from the Attendance and Prosecution Teams and Education Access.  A recording of the meeting, together with the slides, can be found below:

Recording: Click on the image above to access.

Tuesday 25th June 2024:

Ruth Hudson from the council's housing team presented information on the services and support her team provides - https://www.bradford.gov.uk/housing/advice-for-tenants/housing-standards-team/

There were also updates relating to the council's processes and procedures for the 2024/25 academic year.

Slides - John Leese / Lindsey Parkin

Friday 15th March 2024:

This meeting focused predominantly on the Attendance Reforms rolled out by the Department for Education on 29th February, and how they would impact schools and families in Bradford.

Slides - John Leese / Jenny Fox

Friday 10th November 2023:

We returned to a face-to-face meeting, our first one of the academic year.  We were joined by Amy Petschak (Education Access Team Manager), Vicki Morris (Specialist EP and Emotionally Based School Avoidance Project Lead), and Lindsey Parkin (Prosecution Team Manager).

Slides - John Leese

Slides - Amy Petschak

Slides - Vicki Morris

Slides - Lindsey Parkin

Friday 14th July 2023:

Held online due to issues with room bookings, 130 people registered to hear about the implementation of an Attendance Support Team from September 2023.  Updates were also provided in relation to legal intervention, including the introduction of a new Penalty Notice Request Portal during the 2023-24 academic year.  We also considered draft attendance charters for schools and professionals for introduction during the next academic year too.

Slides - John Leese

Slides - Lindsey Fallon

DRAFT - Attendance Charter for Schools

DRAFT - Attendance Charter for Professionals

Friday 17th March 2023:

TBC

Friday 2nd December 2022:

Another well attended Attendance Network Meeting, and we were very priviledged to have been joined by Lisa Stead (Programme Lead and Clinical Lead - Mental Health Support Team, NHS) and Joe Wilson (Senior Education Psychologist). together with Sandra Parton and Charlotte Marlowe, Early Help Co-ordinators within the Family Hubs.

We're currently compiling all the notes. feedback and comments that were shared with us during the group sessions, and we hope to share this with you shortly.

Presentations / Documents:

Presentation - John Leese

Presentation - Joe Wilson / Education Psychology

Presentation - Lisa Stead / Mental Health Support Team

Additional Thrive Handout

Incredible Years Poster

Incredible Years Application Form

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

Presentations - Please click below to download:

Diane McConnell - DfE Attendance Advisor

Kate Hopton / John Leese - Education Safeguarding

Attendance Newsletters

We aim to publish a newsletter every half term, to help keep schools stay up to date with any national and local changes, as well as sharing data, research, events and good practice.

Click here to sign up to receive attendance newsletters directly to your email inbox

Attendance Leaflets

We no longer publish attendance leaflets, however all of our content has been moved to the council website (bradford.gov.uk) and can be referred to by schools and other professionals via the following links and QR codes:

Main Bradford School Attendance Webpage - www.bradford.gov.uk/attendance 

School attendance information for parents and carers - www.bradford.gov.uk/education-and-skills/school-support-services/school-attendance-information-for-parents-and-carers

Persistent Absence - www.bradford.gov.uk/education-and-skills/school-support-services/persistent-absence/

Family holidays during school term time - www.bradford.gov.uk/education-and-skills/school-holidays-and-term-dates/family-holidays-during-school-term-time/

Warning and penalty notices - www.bradford.gov.uk/education-and-skills/school-support-services/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

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