Management Information Sheet
School Attendance Update
Throughout the Spring Term, the Attendance Team will continue to offer all schools consultations with their designated Attendance and Entitlement Officer (AEO) regarding pupil specific concerns. AEOs will agree the frequency of these contacts based on the needs of each setting.
We will continue to provide schools with lists of children with a social worker on a weekly basis using Anycomms+. Where a pupil has an allocated, social worker, schools should continue to inform the social worker of any concerns they have about the child's attendance at the earliest opportunity. Schools should request a consultation with an AEO about any other pupils where attendance is of concern including any child who is persistently absent and/or has missed 10 consecutive days and in those circumstances where the attendance of a child with a social worker is not improving.
The Attendance Team can be contacted on 01603 223681. This line operates during term time Monday-Thursday 9am-5pm and Friday 9am-4pm. You also can e-mail them at csattendance@norfolk.gov.uk.
Attendance and Entitlement Officers are in contact with allocated schools during the first full week of the Spring Term to check that all children with a social worker have returned to school as expected and to identify whether there are any other children the school is worried about.
The Children's Advice and Duty Service (CADS) remains open as usual. Where safeguarding concerns arise, professionals should continue to follow safeguarding procedures contacting CADS with consent where it is appropriate and safe to do so.
Monitoring Attendance
The Attendance Team will continue to track the attendance of pupils with a social worker by collecting persistent absence data for this cohort at half termly intervals.
The data collection sheet for Autumn Half Term 2 was sent via Anycomms+ on Monday 10 January 2022 and we ask that this is completed and sent back by Friday 21 January 2022. If you require any assistance with this request, please speak to your allocated AEO.
We will review the process for collecting this information as more schools come onboard with the live data feed. We are incredibly grateful to all those schools who submitted this data for the first half of the Autumn Term; we received attendance information relating to 1375 children of statutory school age with a social worker which equates to almost 93% of the total cohort. Almost 58% of children with a social worker had 90% attendance or above during this period, with 21% having 100% attendance.
Despite the greatest of efforts, we also know that persistent absences rates for children with a social worker are too high. In addition to the work that Attendance and Entitlement Officers are undertaking with schools, the pupil level data has been shared with relevant social work teams and in response to the data, we have drafted an Attendance Strategy for Norfolk to tackle persistent absence, building on good practice and DfE guidance.
We will be consulting with schools and a range of partners about the draft strategy during the Spring Term and will send further details in due course.
Further advice and support
On Monday 31 January at 1.30pm, we will be hosting a webinar and Q&A session regarding absence management. This will be jointly delivered by Attendance, Safeguarding and the Community and Partnerships Services. You will be able to book onto this webinar through the S4S website, and we will circulate further details in due course.