Top tips for improving attendance
Use our practical tips to help tackle poor attendance in your school. While these aren't intended to be a quick fix, you can put most of them into practice without overhauling your whole strategy.
Contents
- Instil a staff mindset of high expectations around attendance
- Establish a senior leadership team presence around school
- Make good attendance everyone's responsibility
- Give pupils a purpose to be in school each day
- Offer pupils the tools to come to school
- Provide secure conditions for learning
- Use your exciting curriculum to entice pupils
- Anticipate family patterns
- Appoint an attendance lead who’s passionate about high expectations
- Include clear stages of action in your policy
- Further reading on improving attendance
The guidance in this article comes from our expert Nina Siddall-Ward, and Ofsted’s report on securing good attendance.
The DfE has published new non-statutory guidance on improving school attendance that applies from September 2022. Read the summary of updates.
Instil a staff mindset of high expectations around attendance
Having all of your staff on board will help to make sure of a consistent approach to your attendance policy throughout your school. To do this:
- Give staff the necessary attendance vocabulary and encouraging soundbites, like “zero tolerance of low attendance” and “every school day is a great day”
- Remind staff to model a 100% expectation for pupils to attend and learn in every lesson. This is especially important if you're in a secondary school, where your pupils will have multiple teachers during the day
- Make sure staff members model personal punctuality themselves
Have your senior leaders greet pupils on