Management Information Sheet

As the academic year draws to a close, we wanted to take some time to reflect on the progress made this year in terms of our collective response to the requirements of 'Working Together to Improve School Attendance' and our local strategic approach to addressing absence from school: Attendance is Everyone's Responsibility.

We know that the pressures on the Parliamentary timetable have meant that legislation to make 'Working Together to Improve School Attendance' statutory will not be in place before the beginning of the new academic year as planned but this remains top of the legislative priorities for the Department for Education and will be pursued at the next available opportunity. The expectation from the Department is that schools and local authorities should continue with their implementation as it may become statutory at short notice. Locally we know that schools have been working hard to make this happen and as a result:

• Schools in partnership with the Attendance Team have held more than 450 Targeting Support Meetings.
• County-wide and localised attendance networks have been operating throughout the year; they have been well-supported, and feedback indicates that they have provided Attendance Leads with valuable opportunities to share practice and learn from one another.
• In addition to children discussed in Targeting Support Meetings, over 2680 children have been discussed via the Attendance Duty Line.
• Schools have accessed thematic attendance webinars and made use of the guidance available on the Attendance pages on the Norfolk Schools & Learning Providers webpages including the Model Policy.
• The Attendance Self-Assessment has been utilised by a number of settings. We will analyse the results of the completed tools over the Summer Holiday period to identify themes and inform our strategic approach next year. The tool is hosted on, My School and schools are encouraged to complete this as it provides a valuable source of evidence to demonstrate how the setting is meeting expectations regarding school attendance and thus safeguarding children and young people.

Some next steps

Whole school training package

Initial findings from the Attendance Self-Evaluation indicate that whole school training on attendance is a common area for development. In response to this finding, we have developed a whole school training package for schools to utilise. This can be accessed via the School Attendance web pages on the NCC Schools and Learning Providers website.

Parent & Carer Survey

To inform our approach moving forward, we would like to hear from as many parents and carers in Norfolk as possible to understand their views on school attendance and in partnership with Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust we have launched a short parental survey on Just One Norfolk. We would be grateful if you could share the link to the survey with parents and carers as the end of term approaches and encourage them to respond. We have put together the following suggested wording to use to communicate out this message:

School attendance has a big impact on a wide variety of children and young people's outcomes, and we've developed a new strategy for school attendance in Norfolk. We want to find out more from parents and carers about the challenges they face in supporting their children, so please share the survey with the parents and carers you work with so that they can share their views. Please share the link:
www.justonenorfolk.nhs.uk/attendance

Please use the attached image and the wording below on your social media, intranet and newsletters:

Lots of things can make it difficult to support your children to attend school regularly, and the school and Council want to understand what the biggest challenges are and how we can support your family to overcome them. Take the five-minute survey to share your thoughts at www.justonenorfolk.nhs.uk/attendance

Preparing for Beginning of Term

We know that the school community will be focused on the pending summer holiday and taking a well-deserved break, but we wanted to tell you about some work we are planning in preparation for the first week of the Autumn Term to help you to do the same. Research published by the Children's Commissioner indicates the significant impact of absence in the first week of the Autumn Term and how critical that week is for getting pupils into school and settled into the school routine. Analysis of the data showed that:

• Children who had an unauthorised absence on any day in the first week of term, experienced an overall unauthorised absence rate of 25% compared to an overall unauthorised absence rate of two percent for pupils who did not miss any sessions in the first week.
• Missing the second, third or fourth day of the new term is associated with an overall absence of around 43%, or 30 days of school, compared to missing days near the end of term, which were associated with an overall absence of 20-30%.

In preparation for the new term, the Children's Commissioner has provided resources for schools including advice on using data to identify the children and young people who will most benefit from an early intervention. In addition to this, we will be working on a local campaign to promote the importance of attending school during the first week of term.

Termly Targeting Support Meetings (TSMs)

Following the successful implementation of the TSMs this academic year, we are now looking ahead to the new year and how to accommodate the increasing number of schools that are requesting them. At this stage they are still voluntary, but the DfE have advised us that the guidance within the 'Working together...' document could become statutory at any point in the year. When that happens, these meetings will become a statutory requirement. To ensure we can support you with this requirement, we are going to trial a different system similar to our duty line this coming academic year.

Every weekday, there will be an AEO allocated to hold the TSMs booked in for that day. It will mean that you will likely hold your meetings throughout the year with different AEOs but will also mean that we can be very flexible and accommodating to when it is most convenient to you to hold that meeting, rather than trying to fit them into the diary of one AEO. We can also arrange meetings for multiple schools within the same trust/federation that are in different districts, without worrying about the logistics of which AEO takes the meeting.

We will have set slots throughout the day to ensure we don't get over/double booked but can be flexible when it comes to how many meetings we hold per day, as some schools will want/need longer meetings than others. In order to fit as many TSMs in as possible and to allow expansion for meetings with multiple schools, we are proposing the following time slots:

Infant/Junior/Primary schools - 9am-10.30am, 11am-12.30pm, 1.30pm-3pm and 3.30pm-5pm
Secondary schools - 9am-12pm and 1.30pm-4.30pm

With that in mind, we are inviting you to contact us now to get your TSMs booked in for the 2023-2024 academic year. We are more than happy to book all three termly meetings in at this point if you would like, to ensure you get the days/times you would like. Please get in touch with us by emailing us at csattendance@norfolk.gov.uk or calling us on 01603 223 681 with an idea of when you would like to hold a TSM with us, and the duty AEO will book it into the team diary and confirm your slot. Book early to avoid disappointment!