The Department for Education has turned its attention to student attendance figures this week, with new proposals to tackle ‘avoidable absences’ being announced.
As well as a more consistent approach to issuing fines across the country, the government wants every school to have an attendance policy in place – including plans for how they will provide support for pupils who need it – as well as ensure that academies are more in line with other state-funded schools when it comes to granting leaves of absence to students.
The Department’s own figures show that the number of student absences rose from 454,167 in Autumn 2019 to 501,642 in Autumn 2020 and, while Covid will undoubtedly have played a part in this rise, the Education Secretary has reiterated his desire for every child to receive regular face-to-face education. Alongside the DfE’s announcement, Nadhim Zahawi has stated that, while it is unavoidable that absences due to Covid can occur, ‘there are other reasons children miss out on school too’, going on to declare that ‘our new proposals will end the postcode lottery of how attendance is managed in different schools and parts of the country, and make sure every child and family gets the best possible support to attend school as regularly as possible.’
The impact of the pandemic and related issues seems to be reflected in recent student attendance figures in the North East. The Schools North East ‘Easing of Restrictions 2022’ survey last week showed that 88.5% of schools had a student attendance of below 90% in the first few weeks of the new year.
However, while the issue of student absences is an important one, shared by all school leaders, it is staff absence that appears to be the greater challenge for North East Schools. Schools North East has reported on the high levels of staff absence, mainly due to covid, several times since schools returned from the Autumn half term and Christmas breaks. Of those schools surveyed last week, only 31% had a staff attendance of 90% or above, with 31% stating that they had a staff attendance of below 80%.
This has been compounded by the ongoing shortage of supply staff that has hit nationally, but especially in areas like the North East where the National Tuition Programme is taking large numbers of supply staff out of the system to work on the NTP. Jill Thompson, Head Teacher of Kelvin Grove Primary School in Gateshead, has said that they routinely contacted five different supply agencies, but were not able to get anyone.
Student attendance levels, coupled with the very difficult staffing situation, has made for a particularly arduous situation for schools, especially when school staff are working hard to catch up from the impact of the pandemic.
