Temple Moor and Harrogate Grammar School participate in attendance pilot
Posted 1st March 2023
Northern Education Trust is piloting a free programme of attendance support for schools. The training is led by senior leaders from North Shore Academy in Stockton on Tees – the academy was recently rated outstanding by Ofsted, having previously been requires improvement, and having never been graded good. Stockton on Tees is one of the most deprived areas of the country, with 65% of its students attracting pupil premium. North Shore Academy is well known for the work they have done in raising attendance, especially with disadvantaged children, and for also exploring new and innovative ways in which to further have a positive impact on attendance.
The pilot is aimed at secondary schools with a similar context or challenges to North Shore Academy. If the pilot is successful, this approach may be extended to other phases and school types in the future.
In our Teaching School Hub region, Temple Moor and Harrogate Grammar School have both taken up the opportunity to be involved in this pilot. By taking a nationwide collaborative approach they are hoping to learn, trial, and share ideas with other schools.
Temple Moor High School in Leeds has experienced numerous challenges around attendance and strive to remove barriers for all their students to access educational provision. They are acutely aware of the future impacts on these young people as adults if they leave education without the qualifications and social skills to be productive, happy and healthy members of society. You only need to look at the public health profiles data to observe the impact that poverty has on quality of life and life expectancy.
Like many schools across the country, Harrogate Grammar School has suffered the impacts of COVID 19 and found absence rates had not returned to pre-pandemic levels. They are keen to learn from schools where improvements to attendance have been made to help shape their own strategy.
Temple Moor relaunched whole school attendance in September 2022
When we were offered the opportunity to be involved in a DfE pilot around schools working collaboratively to improve attendance, we knew that there would be no easy fixes. North Shore is sharing strategy and resources with the schools involved in the pilot and providing access to their own attendance journey. Reflecting on the work they had done, we knew that we couldn’t just mirror this straight back into Temple Moor. We have a much larger cohort and less resources per pupil in terms of the staffing North Shore had available. However, we were able to implement adapted versions when we did a whole school attendance relaunch in September 2022. It was important for this relaunch to take place at this time as up until then we were still bound by some of the COVID rules and the irony of pushing attendance when students had to be off for a certain number of days every time they had a positive COVID tests was not lost on parents, students and staff alike. We had throughout the pandemic adapted our attendance policy and procedures but maintain safeguarding as a priority.
Firstly, in the relaunch we began to change our whole school culture on attendance and punctuality. Clear direction was given on how it was everyone's responsibility and not just that of the pastoral and leadership team. Students now have consistency on a morning as they are greeted by the same members of senior leadership on the gates and if they arrive late at reception. When students return to school, they have a conversation with their year group SLT link when they visit forms every morning. A form period is given over to recording attendance and discussing what this means in lost days and hours of learning while focusing on whether this been authorised or unauthorised absence. Staff weekly briefings always include an attendance update, and an assembly is given at the start of every half term focusing on positive attendance which is linked to the curriculum and progress.
North Shore had a bespoke plan for those students with school-based avoidance (an increasing issue at Temple Moor) so again we looked at how we could adapt this. The pastoral and SEND teams have created a package of reintegration and in school support for students who have been out of school for a period of time or who are struggling with mental or physical ill health. This provision can also be accessed by our cluster attendance support to utilise as an option before the decision is made to take parents to legal proceedings.
The work we have done in response to participating in this project has enabled us to stay in line with national attendance figures and has resulted in our persistent absentee percentage being lower than national data produced by the DfE and FFT. It has also provided us with the opportunity to take ideas from the other schools in the pilot and we have given back by presenting and sharing our attendance journey so far. At Temple Moor like most schools, we still have a lot of challenges to overcome. At present our focus is on a whole school culture of positive attendance because our pastoral team who work on the frontline must focus on the safeguarding element which has to be the number one priority. We look forward to the future where we hope that their focus can be equally shared between attendance improvement and safeguarding.
Harrogate Grammar School has seen attendance moving in a positive direction
North Shore’s overriding message from the beginning has been that to improve attendance you have to treat it with a laser sharp focus, and it must be visible at all levels of school. This includes consistent and regular discussion at SLT. These strategies and ideas have guided our attendance strategy this year at Harrogate Grammar School.
Our current attendance strategy is focused on tackling attendance on several distinct levels, informed by regular analysis of data. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own attendance with guided activities at regular points in the half term, supported by key messages about the importance of attendance delivered through assemblies. Form Tutors also place a key role as they have supportive conversations with absent students upon their return. This helps to identify any barriers to regular attendance.
We closely track attendance data. Student attendance is tracked on a biweekly basis and interventions are put in place if a student is at risk of declining attendance. Contact home will be made by Year Managers and senior pastoral staff if a student's attendance continues to deteriorate. Students who have fallen into the PA cohort are intensely monitored, with swift contact home. As soon as a student misses a day parents are contacted and are invited into school for an attendance meeting. We also have students reflect on their attendance at the beginning of the half term and form tutors have been sent lists of absent students so they can have supportive conversations with them on their return.
On the back of discussions from the North Shore attendance meetings we have looked at ways we can raise the profile of attendance around school through graphics and regular talks in assemblies. We have also celebrated improvement to attendance through letters home to students and parents.
We are now confident that the changes we have made to our attendance strategy, as a result of being part of this national pilot, is starting to come through in the data. As an example, this can be seen from some analysis of year 10 attendance data. In our first round of intensive data monitoring with Year 10 we monitored 11 students for a month (all of whom were at less than 90% attendance). Out of a possible total 220 days of monitoring- there were only 10 days of absence- this works out at just 4% absence. 5 students had 100% attendance over the month.
Further rounds of intensive monitoring have harvested similar results and overall attendance has been moving in a positive direction across all year groups since the beginning of December. We feel all the different strands of our attendance strategy, informed by discussions and guidance from the North Shore pilot, can be attributed for a large part of this.