Any tips/tricks to help raise student attendance and dealing with difficult parents?
This is far to complex an issue to be reduced to 'tips and tricks'. If you're looking for quick fixes there aren't any. You really need to understand the barriers to regular school attendance, and the specific groups that are most affected.
You need to understand SEND, especially neuro-divergance and SEMH issues. You need to read into Emotionally based school avoidance, trauma and the cycle of anxiety. If your school is not meeting the needs of kids with SEND effectively, ensuring they feel safe and supported, offering reasonable adjustments and ensuring these are applied consistently in all classes but is then threatening parents with fines when their kids don't come in, things are going badly wrong.
You need to understand the lived experience of Young Carers, care-experienced children and child refugees/asylum seekers. Ask yourself what is the school doing to support these children and families with the challenges they are facing, could you be doing more?
You need to understand that attendance can be a safeguarding issue and that poverty, parental mental health issues, criminal exploitation and gang culture, neglect, substance misuse, CSE and domestic violence can all be factors in persistent non-attendance.
You also need to understand that some "difficult parents" are difficult to deal with for a reason. They may have their own needs and vulnerabilies. They may have been let down by the system many times. You need to work with them, not against them. You need to be non-judgemental and recognise that they are the experts in their own children. Listen to them, offer support and practical help but don't patronise them or be intrusive.
Schools need to be flexible, compassionate, inclusive and understand that if they get it right for the most vulnerable kids then all kids benefit. That's how you raise attendance. It's not something that one person can achieve, you need a supportive and forward thinking LT or you're fighting a losing battle.