Updated tools and support for improving attendance
The new tools and guidance have been produced to support settings to analyse and provide practical guidance to strengthen the positive culture around attendance. Good work is already happening as in 2024/25, pupils spent over 5 million more days in the classroom than the year before, with 140,000 fewer pupils persistently absent.
The resources published are:
- Explore your setting attendance patterns: As part of 'View your attendance data', this new data tool - a visual heatmap across the year - helps to spot patterns in your setting’s own data at a glance
- An attendance research report: setting out the national picture on some common predictable absence patterns
- An updated attendance toolkit for schools: with a new chapter (8) to help your setting understand what practical yet proportionate actions you can take
- A guide on communicating with parents about attendance: offering ready made evidence-based resources, such as animations, an NHS poster on illness decisions and useful templates
The government are aware that school absence presents two distinct challenges: a large number of pupils missing some school, much of which is occasional days in predictable patterns, and a smaller but growing number missing more than half of school. Tackling both is central to their shared goal of recovering 20 million absence days by 2029. The tools have been designed with this in mind but predominantly focus on occasional absence. There is a further suite of resources, co-produced by the NHS, for parents and carers to support the messages on attendance.
There is a webinar on Monday 7 July, 11am – 12pm, to go through the support package, and how it can help improve attendance in your setting. You will be able to watch a recording on YouTube shortly after.
