By Michael Gooch, Forum Strategy Associate & School Improvement Consultant
In 2021 the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) highlighted at a national level the crisis in school attendance taking a grip across many parts of the country, leading into the production of their last report, Lost and Not Found in March 2023. The CSJ’s latest report builds on this by shining a light on the specific impact that poor attendance is having on the most disadvantaged families. For example, within it, they find that those children who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) are three times more likely to be persistently or severely absent from school than their counterparts who do not access FSM, which serves to further underline the links between attendance and achievement, and illustrates these issues are further compounding disadvantage. Something, no doubt, trust leaders are all too aware of.
The report is broken down into three chapters and contains a further set of recommendations. If, like me, you have been involved in attendance work for some considerable time, you may be forgiven for rolling your eyes at this point, concerned this might be another set of recommendations that are great in theory but very difficult (or nigh on impossible) to deliver in practice. Compounding this is the issue that although attendance work is a statutory duty, it is largely being directed by non-statutory guidance. Also, as trust leaders and people at the forefront of these challenges, we know that many of the recommendations made by the CSJ in their last report have yet to be given serious consideration or implemented by the Government. That said, it is always worth taking the time to consider reports and recommendations such as this as there will likely be at least some aspects we can take and tailor to our own contexts.
“children who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) are three times more likely to be persistently or severely absent from school than their counterparts who do not access FSM”