School attendance – letter to governors and trustees

Damian Hinds Minister for Schools has written to governors and trustees to ask them to support the Department for Education’s (DfE) new school attendance campaign. The campaign is designed to influence parental attitudes towards school attendance whilst reminding those involved in school governance of the important role they play in ensuring children are in school as much as possible.

He believes that improving school attendance is vitally important. Between the last pre-pandemic academic year 2018/19 and academic year 2021/22, persistent absence (missing more than 10% of sessions) doubled to 1.6m (22.3%, or 1 in 5), with around 850,000 more children affected.

The DfE is running a communications campaign on school attendance this term to remind parents that attendance counts. The DfE provides templates for communicating with parents and carers about attendance, alongside campaign materials and a list of resources for schools, including guidance on mild illness, links to support for children who are anxious about school and a toolkit for communicating with families.

The DfE believe that governors and trustees play a key role in working together with school and trust leaders to set whole school attendance cultures. The DfE’s Working Together to Improve School Attendance guidance sets out the expectations of academy trust boards and governing bodies of maintained schools. The expectations include recognising the importance of school attendance and promoting it across the school or trust ethos and policies, as well as regularly reviewing attendance data, discussing and challenging trends and helping school and trust leaders focus improvement efforts on the individual pupils or cohorts who need it most. Mr Hinds encourages governors and trustees to review their school’s attendance data and see how it compares to national and local data.

He ends his letter by saying that he is “very grateful for all that you do to make your school or trust a great place for children to learn. Your commitment and leadership are critical to the strong running of our schools, and I thank you in advance for your continued support to improve school attendance.“