Management Information Sheet

Norfolk County Council is committed to working with schools and other partners to improve school attendance and punctuality across the Local Authority. Underpinning this commitment is the understanding that there is a strong correlation between good school attendance and achieving positive outcomes for children. Learning from national and Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership serious case reviews and child practice reviews highlight the importance of having access to a school place to a child's life and the need to place school life at the heart of multi-agency planning and provision.

A comprehensive new attendance strategy for children and young people in Norfolk has now been launched. This strategy is a vital contribution to our aim of supporting young people to flourish in Norfolk and will impact everyone working with or supporting children and young people in Norfolk. This Attendance Strategy has been developed to help the Local Authority, schools and other services understand what we need to do to work in a more coherent way, making the best use of resources available, in order to ensure that all children and young people can make the most of the opportunities provided by attending school. It has been informed by the expectations outlined in 'Working Together to Improve School Attendance' as well as learning from audit and feedback from schools and other partners last year.

We know that key to the promotion of school attendance is having a system that is able to respond to the vulnerabilities of children and families at the earliest opportunity; we appreciate that schools cannot tackle this alone, the reasons for non-attendance can be complex. We will be working with colleagues from a wide variety of services in Norfolk to deliver this strategy in a comprehensive and effective manner. Work has already started on the action plan that accompanies the Strategy; you will have seen this in the work the Attendance Team has been doing since the beginning of this academic year to develop Targeting Support Meetings, local attendance networks and through the delivery of thematic webinars. We will continue to seek the views of schools, children and parents and carers to develop new resources to support the implementation of the Strategy and assess its impact.

Attendance Self-Assessment

As part of the package of measures, we are delighted to launch a new Attendance Self-Assessment. The self-assessment has been developed to support school leaders to assess practice in order to meet the requirements laid out in 'Working Together to Improve School Attendance'. The 5 areas contained within the self-assessment are aligned with Norfolk's Attendance Strategy, DfE guidance and best practice advice, the Ofsted thematic review and Framework for inspection.

The tool will available on Monday 20 February, hosted on My School in the same way as the safeguarding self-assessment tool. It will assist schools to examine the current arrangements in place to identify areas of good practice as well as those which may require further development. A completed tool with evidence of actions undertaken in response to the self-assessment is a valuable source of evidence to demonstrate how the setting is meeting expectations regarding school attendance and thus safeguarding children and young people.

The Attendance Team is offering a webinar at 10am to 11am on Thursday 23rd February to introduce the self-evaluation tool. If you would like to attend the webinar, please book a place via the S4S website or by contacting the Attendance Team at: asa@norfolk.gov.uk. The webinar will be recorded for those who are unable to attend the session.

We would ask that you make arrangements to access the self-assessment and complete this via My School by May Half Term. In order to inform the Attendance Strategy action plan and ensure that schools are prepared to meet the requirements of 'Working Together to Improve School Attendance', the Attendance Team will analyse the aggregated findings from the completed self-evaluation tools during the Summer Term 2023 and discuss completed self-evaluation tools with individual schools as part of the Summer Term targeting support meetings. If during the course of completing the self-evaluation there are areas you require additional support with, please discuss these with your allocated Attendance & Entitlement Officer at your next scheduled meeting or contact the Attendance Team by telephone on 01603 223681 or via e-mail: csattendance@norfolk.gov.uk.