This article first appeared in SecEd’s Vulnerable Learners supplement in March 2024…
Disadvantaged pupils are more than twice as likely to be absent from school as their non-disadvantaged peers. And, although there has long been an attendance gap, the divide has widened since the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2022-2023, 37.9% of disadvantaged pupils were persistently absent from school, compared with 16.7% of non-disadvantaged pupils. What’s more, whereas persistent absence rates among non-disadvantaged pupils have begun to fall since the pandemic, albeit only by 0.8 percentage points (from 17.5% in 2021-2022), persistent absence rates for disadvantaged pupils have continued to grow since the pandemic, up by 0.5 percentage points (from 37.2% in 2021-2022).
So, why has attendance got worse for all pupils but particularly so for disadvantaged pupils?
A report by the think tank, Public First, published in June 2023, found that Covid had caused a seismic shift in parental attitudes to school attendance. The report concluded that it was no longer the case that everyday mattered – at least from the perspective of parents. And this was, in part, because there had been a fundamental breakdown in the relationship between schools and parents.
An article in The Guardian, which was also published in June 2023, sought to summarise some other factors that had contributed to a growing attendance gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils. The article first cited anxiety and mental health issues as being a significant cause:
“While poor mental health among young people was a growing concern before the pandemic, it has deteriorated since,” claimed the article. “According to NHS Digital, 18% of children aged seven to 16 had a probable mental disorder in 2022, up from 12.1% in 2017, meaning already overstretched NHS mental health services are unable to cope with rising demand.”
My first-hand experience in schools tells me that mental health and attendance are intersectional because, during the lockdowns, pupils’ mental health issues were not being identified and this led to a bulge in the number of referrals being made post-lockdown. What’s more, more pupils begun to experience mental health problems because of the pandemic, particularly related to their lockdown experiences. Thus, the NHS has had to contend with a spike in referrals and yet funding cuts and a reduction in staffing levels have left them unable to cope with the demand. More pupils are therefore missing school while they await assessment and treatment. And I know from the schools I work with that, at the moment, the lag between referral and assessment can be as long as two years.
This is one of the reasons for the attendance gap but it’s not just pupils with mental health issues whose attendance is being impacted; indeed, all pupils with SEND are more likely to be absent…
The Guardian said that “It is well known that children with special educational needs and disabilities are more at risk of absence from school, and that link has become more pronounced since the pandemic, which took a particularly heavy toll on many of these pupils. While some children were unable to attend because of healthcare appointments, more often their absence was because the school was unable to deliver the required adjustments or provide a suitable learning environment.”
Nor is it just SEND that is causing an attendance gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils…
The Guardian also cited the cost-of-living crisis as a factor which, the article said, had resulted in many more families struggling: “Schools and charities say some parents cannot afford to ensure their child has a clean uniform or pay for bus fares every day. Given a choice of food or school, food wins.”
Linked to this, insecure, poor-quality housing is increasingly a barrier to children going to school. The education charity School-Home Support, which works with persistently absent pupils and their families to improve school attendance, says this: “Typical problems are that families who are moved into refuges because of domestic violence, or into emergency accommodation after an eviction, can find themselves long distances from their school, making journeys expensive. Also, children in cramped, unsuitable accommodation have nowhere to do homework, which can make it challenging for pupils to engage with their studies and attend lessons regularly.”
Again, my first-hand experience confirms the truth of this. Pupils living in poverty – of which there are an increasing number including many who are not in receipt of free school meals – find it far harder to attend school for a multitude of reasons. Poor sleep and nutrition are a barrier to a child’s ability to get up and get dressed and to school on time and able to pay attention and engage in lessons. A lack of resources ranging from an alarm clock to a car also pose a barrier to attendance. The lack of a quiet study space with access to the internet and a device can prevent children from completing homework or preparing for tests and thus they stay away from school rather than face the humiliation of failure. Despite the public perception of welfare-scroungers, children living in poverty often have parents who work multiple jobs or unsocial shift patterns who therefore cannot be present to support their child’s morning routine or help them with homework.
If this is why – at least in part – disadvantaged pupils are more likely to be absent from school, what can we do to close the attendance gap?
Public First claimed there needed to be a review of how schools and the wider education system communicated with parents. Schools, they said, need to provide intensive, nuanced support to families for whom attendance is an issue. And, where attendance is a significant issue, “schools need to be empowered to work with the family to address the underlying causes”. This, in part, requires “better joined up working and signposting to the appropriate agencies [which] would ensure that those best placed to offer support were doing so”.
Better joined up working would also enable schools to “focus on providing the educational support they have expertise in” and avoid them being blamed by parents for failures in these other areas of the system.
I would add that improved parental communication also requires staff training. Staff need the requisite knowledge and skills to understand the issues leading to an attendance gap and they need to be able to have difficult conversations with pupils and families to address those issues and put in place targeted support to overcome them. As a minimum, staff need training on how to complete accurate and timely registers and on how to quickly follow up on any unexplained absences.
I would also suggest a ‘back to basics’ approach to communications which begins with an explanation of the law. The law is simple: every child of compulsory school age is entitled to an “efficient, full-time education suitable to their age, aptitude, and any special educational need they may have”. It is the legal responsibility of every parent to ensure their child attends school regularly – which means their child must attend every day that the school is open, except when they are too ill to attend or have been given permission for an absence in advance from the school.
A school’s attendance policy therefore needs to define what ‘too ill’ means and the NHS resource, ‘Is my child too ill for school’ is a good starting point for this. When in doubt, parents should be encouraged – in a supportive not supercilious manner – to send their child to school to allow professionals to decide if they are well enough to attend.
Next, schools should explain why the law exists – why is attendance so important that it has been made a legal obligation? To help answer this question, there is no shortage of data which proves the link between good attendance at school and:
• Better educational outcomes
• Better chances of progression to further and/or higher education
• Better chances of finding meaningful, fulfilling employment, and earning more
• Better health and wellbeing now and lifelong
What’s more, for the most vulnerable pupils, regular attendance at school is an important protective factor and the best opportunity for their additional and different needs to be identified and support provided.
In short, in order to tackle the attendance gap, schools should flip the conversation. Instead of talking in deficit terms about absences or sharing headline data (85% attendance is a serious cause for concern but parents may be forgiven for thinking it’s acceptable because 85% in a test would probably result in a pass), schools should promote the positive impact of good attendance.
And the best place to start flipping the conversation is in the school attendance policy…
The best policies set out the school’s expectations of attendance and punctuality and explain the procedures that it will follow whenever a pupil does not attend or is late for school and/or lessons. The best policies are the result of a consultation with as wide an audience as possible and are then communicated widely and often and in a variety of forms. For example, relevant segments of the policy might be included in letters home and made easily accessible via the school website, perhaps as hyperlinked webpages rather than a downloadable document, making it easier for parents to find the section they need. Short form explainer videos (TikTok style), as well as dual-coded flow charts, are also great ways of reminding pupils and parents of the importance of attendance and of the procedures to follow in the event of an absence.
Although consistency is key, a good policy also acknowledges that different pupils have different needs and face different challenges in attending school and being on time. As such, every pupil should not be treated the same.
To this end, it is important to identify the barriers that individual pupils face – particularly those who are disadvantaged. In practice, and put simply, this means that for every pupil who misses school or is late to school, we ask ‘why?’ What has prevented this pupil from attending? Is it something at home or in school? Only by truly analysing the causes can we begin to find workable solutions.
Once the causes of non-attendance are known, the next step is to plan personalised strategies to help support the pupil back into school. Here, it is crucial that attempts are made to involve – and not just inform – parents and external agencies in the process, and to do so as early as possible. Parents should be regarded as partners in the process of improving attendance because without parental support and understanding, it is unlikely that any strategies will be effective in the long-term. Furthermore, a pupil needs to see that the school and home are united in common cause, working together and talking to each other.
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