How to hold attendance meetings with parents and pupils, in a way that promotes collaborative working to remove barriers to attendance.
Working together to Improve School Attendance 2024 (Statutory Guidance for Schools) requires Schools to build relationships with families. This means work proactively with parents to understand reasons for low attendance and to remove barriers to support improved attendance. This includes a statutory requirement to work with a Support First Model, at a minimum meeting with parents (and pupils where it is age appropriate) when children are persistently absent.
Evidence suggests that effective partnership working with parents can result in improved attendance for children and young people. Research shows a strong relationship between parent engagement and educational outcomes, including school attendance (Epstein and Sheldon 2002).
Helping families involves working with them and therefore the quality of the relationship between the family and professionals directly impacts on the effectiveness of help given” Munro 2011
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Attendance Officers, Pastoral Staff, Child and Family Support Worker, Learning Mentors, Members of School SLT who are responsible for meeting with parents to support improved attendance.
KEY LEARNING OBJECTIVES
This masterclass will enable you to understand:
The principles in building professional relationships and the potential barriers
The difference between attendance action plans and attendance contracts.
The importance of capturing Pupil Voice.
Attendees will be confident in setting agenda for Attendance Meetings
Attendees will be confident in approaches for action planning with parents to remove barriers to attendance.
Attendees will feel confident in setting Attendance Targets and agreeing SMART Actions.
Attendees will feel confident in managing difficult conversations.
FACILITATOR
Joanne became an “accidental” Education Welfare Officer (EWO) in January 2000 after finding herself in a 3-month contract that has become a 22+ year career.
From 2000 to 2005 Joanne was employed as an EWO and allocated to a range of primary and secondary schools. In 2005 she took on the post of Primary Project Manager, managing a small team of Assistant Education Welfare Officers, in a BIP funded project with a focus to improve attendance using a combination of strategic, casework and preventative project work in a number of Primary Schools. It was at this time seeing the success of this approach that she became further convinced about the importance of a whole school strategic approach to improve attendance (based on a clear understanding of attendance data), coupled with casework undertaken within the legal framework. In 2010 she became Senior Education Welfare Officer and then in 2013 Acting Chief Education Welfare Officer. In both roles the use of attendance data, and upskilling EWOs and School’s in understanding and using attendance data to develop a strategic plan to improve attendance has been a focus. She was involved in delivering the CWDC induction to Education Welfare Officers regionally, and the LDSS NVQ for Education Welfare Officers regionally both as course tutor and assessor and again seized opportunities to promote the use of attendance data in understanding and improving school attendance. In October 2015 with two partners Joanne established CSAWS (Central School Attendance and Welfare Service ltd). CSAWS is a team of proactive, passionate Education Welfare Officers. They are committed to achieving better outcomes for children by securing regular attendance at school.
