How to improve your child’s attendance at school

[User5827372728]

What do you think your kids school could do to help your child improve their attendance?

Any ideas would be very happily received!

Thank you

Why do you want schools to improve children’s attendance? For ofsted? To improve attainment? Primary or secondary?

Depends why the kids aren’t attending, isn’t it more down to parents than the school?

You need to survey the kids and ask them!

Would depend on the age of the child, reasons for non-attendance and parental cooperation.

Better support for additional needs

Better understanding of how mental health can impact a child's ability to attend school.

Dealing with bullying in a robust way to make school a safe place to be.

This is on the basis you are asking about school refusal/school based anxiety rather than parenting issues with attendance

Eradicate all stomach bugs, colds, chicken pox, impetigo, scarlet fever and other infectious diseases.

It depends why attendance is poor. I've had so many letters from school moaning about ds4's attendance. His absences have been mainly hospital admissions, hospital appointments and the school sending him home for reflux because they think it's a vomiting bug.

I’m looking at it from a secondary point of view

Why? Because the main barrier to learning in our school is attendance. And this isn’t including illness

Don't force children who hate academic learning and classrooms to go to school. Find a new way of teaching.
It's so hard for those children who hate school.
One size doesn't fit all!

I do not want them to do anything.
A child should not be made to feel bad for being poorly. All this push for 100% attendance is so damaging.
My eldest had mental health issues at secondary school and the best was of improving her attendance was taking the pressure off and understanding that sometimes she just couldn't attend.
Dd2 has excellent attendance but we still get letters from school moaning about medical appointments and pushing for 100% attendance even well unwell.
Other countries encourage children to stay home when sick we have a damaging culture of presenteeism.

More stringent enforcement of exclusion for illness, including seemingly mild illness, to prevent disease spread to medically vulnerable students

Make sure teachers have adequate training on tings like SEN and trauma/mh.

Trauma informed schools do a good course.

Also a family support worker who is good at their job .

No early starts. Teens naturally wake later, so a secondary that starts at 10 or 11 or even ran noon to 6pm may suit them more.

@User5827372728

I’m looking at it from a secondary point of view

Why? Because the main barrier to learning in our school is attendance. And this isn’t including illness

You really need to look at what is specifically happening in your school. Does your school have an educational welfare officer? Do they contact home? Visit if a child is not attending? In the school I worked at this was very effective, especially with nipping any anxiety/bullying in the bud with year 7s and preventing it becoming a bigger issue.

It needs to happen in conjunction with good pastoral support. Learning mentors who monitor and support issues.

‘Why? Because the main barrier to learning in our school is attendance. And this isn’t including illness’

Have you tested this? The main barrier? How do you know?

Also access to specialist bereavement, domestic violence and other counselling services. As well as working closely with primary schools where there were families in both schools with attendance issues related to poor parenting.

There are many reasons why children don't attend school. As others have pointed out, increased school attendance is not always in the best interests of an individual child.

You need to find out why these specific children are not attending, work out whether that actually does need to change, and look at ways to help them attend more regularly.

A decent anti bullying policy that is actually enforced. Some of the children skipping school are doing so because they'd rather miss lessons than be tormented.