Staff in those Schools which are using electronic registration systems need to be aware of the following advice which has been issued by the DfES.

Thankyou

Trevor Boore

Deputy Head of Service

Norfolk Pupil Attendance Service

Attention: School Absence return - electronic registration - 'housekeeping' - accuracy of unauthorised absence returns

Colleagues may already be aware of a feature of electronic registration that, without complete checking, could potentially result in an inaccurate unauthorised absence rate being submitted to Forvus for publication by DfES . The problem arises from missing marks being left in the system which then count as unauthorised absence.

This can be the result of marks not being recorded or because a pupil who left the school during the year has not been flagged as a leaver in the eRegistration software. If a school has not run the appropriate procedure to enter a leaving date into the eRegistration system for a pupil who left the school then there may be a large number of unauthorised absences being counted which will not be a true summary.

There is the possibility that schools will not have done this and so return figures which are worse than they should be.

Schools can rectify this by taking the following steps before completing the final return to Forvus:

Running the appropriate housekeeping routine within the eRegistration system to ensure that all leaving dates are transferred before producing the return. Checking for missing marks where no data has been entered.

We would be grateful if you could follow up this information with your schools after the break as appropriate.

This potential problem was identified by the Education Welfare Service in Solihull. Its effect in one school was to increase the unauthorised absences by nearly 2%.

Yours sincerely

Chris Connolly

School Attendance Team

Tel: 020 7925 6150