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<p>The department is clear that parents should do everything they can to ensure that
their child is in school every day. Regular school attendance is vital for children’s
attainment, mental wellbeing and long-term development. It is crucial that the department
has a system of support in place to ensure every child attends school every day, ready
to learn and thrive.</p><p>The government’s ‘Working Together to Improve School Attendance’
guidance, which will become statutory ahead of the next school year, includes a core
set of functions that local authority attendance support staff, whether titled education
welfare officers, attendance officers or early help practitioners, are expected to
provide free of charge to all schools and funded centrally through the Central Schools
Service Block and Supporting Families Grant. Some early adopters have reported benefits
from integrating attendance into other services, and providing better, more joined
up whole family support, that has the potential to reduce demand for higher cost crisis
services over time.</p><p>The department’s attendance mentors pilot sees mentors supporting
a group of persistently absent pupils and their families, on a one-to-one basis, to
help identify and address their barriers to education. The department has had positive
feedback from parents, pupils and schools who have engaged with the attendance mentors
programme and have started to see some promising impact data. The department has recently
announced an additional investment of £15 million to expand mentoring into ten new
areas over the next three years.</p><p>The government’s Supporting Families programme
continues to work with families where attendance issues are a significant concern.
‘Getting a good education’ is a headline indicator in the national Supporting Families
Outcomes Framework, which requires sustained good attendance for all children in the
family, across two consecutive school terms. It is important that those identifying
attendance issues begin to explore and identify any issues which may be behind the
attendance problems, including any needs and circumstances in the wider family as
part of Early Help Assessment processes.</p><p>The department’s reforms are starting
to make a difference. There were 440,000 fewer pupils persistently absent or not attending
in 2022/23 than in the year before. Overall absence during the 2023/24 autumn term
was 6.8%, down from 7.5% in the 2022/23 autumn term.</p><p>Alongside this, the department
is currently considering options for widening access to parenting support through
family hubs and is undertaking assessments of the effectiveness and value for money
of evidence-based parenting programmes, as well as other forms of support for parents.
As part of this work to inform future fiscal events, the department will consider
the downstream economic impacts of parenting programmes.</p><p> </p>
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