The LGA shares the Department for Education’s (DfE’s) belief that good attendance at school plays a vital role in children’s development and for their well-being.
Key points
- The LGA shares the Department for Education’s (DfE’s) belief that good attendance at school plays a vital role in children’s development and for their well-being. The consultation focuses on those children in school, but it would be helpful for the Department to also set out how the importance of attendance applies to children and young people being home educated.
- The consultation rightly acknowledges that Covid-19 has had a negative impact on school attendance, but the number of children missing from mainstream education was rising before 2020. Children miss mainstream education for a number of reasons, including the use of exclusions, off-rolling and moving to elective home education (EHE). The Department has previously consulted on plans to introduce an EHE register and the White Paper provides a timely opportunity to bring forward these plans. A duty on parents to register home-schooled children with their local council will help them to monitor how children are being educated.
- We support the proposal to require all schools, irrespective of their status (maintained, single academy or part of a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT)), to have an attendance policy and have regard to statutory guidance on the expectations of schools, academy trusts and governing bodies if maintained schools on attendance management and improvement. A consistent approach across all schools will increase understanding of the role that schools play in raising and maintaining attendance levels.
- We are also supportive of the proposal to introduce a set of minimum expectations developed in consultation with councils. We welcome the consultation’s acknowledgement that councils need the flexibility to develop their own arrangements locally and that the Department will not introduce a central ‘one size fits all’ approach. It is also helpful that the consultation acknowledges that it will take councils time to transition from their existing school attendance services to the minimum expectations proposed.
- Raising and improving levels of school attendance is a key part of council’s school improvement function and it is therefore disappointing that the Department has recently decided to reduce and then remove the Local Authority Monitoring and Brokering grant, which funds improvement work undertaken with schools. Removing the grant is at odds with the proposals set out in this consultation and the Department should make up for this loss of funding to ensure councils can continue to play a meaningful role in this space.
- Any new national framework needs to provide clarity for parents, take full account of the discretion given to head teachers to initiate formal legal intervention and should encourage preventative intervention for long-term absence issues.
- It would also be helpful for the Department to acknowledge that supporting children and their families to ensure good attendance at school involves partnership working, including input from health. Timely support from the health sector, including medical and therapeutic interventions for example, is vital in allowing children with physical and mental health needs to attend school.
Consultation questions
Proposal 1: Requiring schools to have an attendance policy, and have regard to statutory guidance on the expectations of schools, academy trusts and governing bodies of maintained schools on attendance management and improvement
We support the proposal to require all schools, irrespective of their status (maintained, single academy or part of a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT)), to have an attendance policy and have regard to statutory guidance on the expectations of schools, academy trusts and governing bodies if maintained schools on attendance management and improvement. A consistent approach across all schools will increase understanding of the role that schools play in raising and maintaining attendance levels.
In a school-led education system it is right that all schools publish a policy on attendance management and improvement and be required to have regard to new statutory guidance on attendance management and improvement.
Basing this requirement on a series of principles identified in work with schools that had previously improved levels of attendance is welcome, as is the requirement to regularly review and publicise the attendance policy.
We support the proposal for councils to deliver communication and networking to share good practice and communications across schools and parents. This should also build wherever possible on existing effective practice undertaken in this space by councils and we would be happy to work with the Department to identify such practice. Beyond that the Department must also work with councils to undertake a new burdens assessment on the costs of implementing these new arrangements, particularly in light of the removal of the Local Authority Monitoring and Brokering grant, which has resulted in councils having to top-slice the Dedicated Schools Grant to fund their school improvement activity.
Proposal 2: Introducing statutory guidance on the expectations of local authority attendance services
The LGA agrees that persistent absence from school is often a symptom of wider problems in a child’s life and that councils, working with local safeguarding partners, have a vital role to play in ensuring all children receive the full-time education to which they are entitled.
As with proposal 1, it is helpful that the Department has worked with councils that are undertaking work to increase levels of school attendance and that the consultation sets out the key components found in effective council attendance services.
We are supportive of the proposal to introduce a set of minimum expectations developed in consultation with councils. We welcome the consultation’s acknowledgement that councils need the flexibility to develop their own arrangements locally and that the Department will not introduce a central ‘one size fits all’ approach. It is also helpful that the consultation acknowledges that it will take councils time to transition from their existing school attendance services to the minimum expectations proposed.
We agree that the proposed components for council attendance services are sufficient to improve the consistency of attendance support which pupils, parents and schools receive.
The Department must use the time prior to the statutory guidance being introduced to undertake a new burdens assessment and provide additional funding to councils as identified by that process.
Raising levels of school attendance is a key part of council’s school improvement work and we are therefore concerned by the apparent contradiction with the proposals set out in this consultation and the recent decision to reduce and then entirely remove the Local Authority Monitoring and Brokering grant which funds council school improvement functions.
Proposal 3: A clearer more consistent national framework for the use of attendance legal intervention, including a new regulatory framework for issuing fixed penalty notices for absence
The LGA has long called for the introduction of a national framework for the use of attendance legal intervention, including a new regulatory framework for issuing fixed penalty notices for absence and which provides clarity for schools, councils and families.
We welcome the Department’s acknowledgement that councils and schools have a variety of tools that they can use to address poor attendance and that timely use of these tools should be prioritised and fines only issued when other avenues of support and challenge have been exhausted.
The Department should undertake work to clarify why there is such a wide variety in the issuing of fixed penalty notices for absence in different areas. The shape of a new national framework should reflect a consensus on best practice and take account of the discretionary elements in the system, which rely on the judgement of Head Teachers who are best placed to make decisions about individual families and children.
Proposal 4: Bringing the rules for granting leaves of absence in academies in line with other state funded schools
We support the proposal to bring the rules of granting leaves of absence in academies in line with other state funded schools. It is right that a single set of rules govern the behaviour of all state funded schools irrespective of their structure, providing clarity and certainty to pupils and their families.
Additional information
While it is outside the scope of this consultation, the Department must also take action to ensure councils can meet the needs of children and young people with mental health needs are met and those children can continue to attend school.
We are concerned about the growing difficulties in accessing the right help and support for children and young people with the most complex and overlapping needs, finding themselves on the edge of the criminal justice or care systems and/or the brink of hospitalisation. We believe a wholly new approach and therapeutic offering is required to respond to their needs, regardless of whether the child’s primary presenting need is justice, welfare or mental health-related.
To support all young people, we are calling for early support hubs, which allow young people to access mental health support without referrals, to be made available for young people nationwide. These centres bring together various services to support young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing - such as youth services; sexual health, drug and alcohol, health and wellbeing practitioners; and mental health practitioners - before they hit crisis point. The hubs, which have already been rolled out in some areas, are delivering positive outcomes with some reporting social and economic benefit returns of more than triple the money that has been invested.