I just saw this article in the BBC and am astounded at the daft reasoning. Apparently, students who miss days in the first week of school are more likely to be persistently absent, therefore we need a critical focus on attendance in the first week to reduce absence.
I feel like someone needs to let the DfE know that correlation does not equal causation! Surely it’s just that children with factors causing absence are more likely to miss a day in the first week than children who don’t have those factors. I am pretty sure if they took a data subset from ANY week in the year, persistently absent students would be more likely to be absent in that week than non persistently absent students!
Therefore it’s not the week that’s critical, it’s the factors driving absence we need to focus on.
I am all for having a public awareness campaign but why muddy statistics like this instead of just talking about what is actually needed to solve absence.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7jk3rr225o