With the term now fully underway, the pupils who will need the most attention through the year have started to make themselves known. The FFT datalab released an interesting blog last week demonstrating that pupils who missed school at the beginning of last academic year, even taking to account staggered starts, were more likely to be subsequently persistently absent than those who didn’t. They propose that rather than this being solely due to pupils getting off to a poor start to the year, pupils who miss school in the first week tend to have underlying circumstances which make them more likely to be persistently absent and, probably, to have been persistently absent in the past. Of course, identifying and seeking to address these underlying issues is an area where school resources become stretched. The DfE has convened an attendance alliance specifically to join up thinking on this issue and will be working with you to update the Camden attendance strategy this half term to ensure the support from Camden and Camden Learning is well co-ordinated and helpful to schools.
Convincing reluctant pupils to attend school regularly sometimes means convincing parents of the same. Schools that build strong partnerships with parents can benefit from the trust and links they have established when these more difficult conversations arise. There not one template for managing school parent relationships effectively, but the EEF research report, Working with Parents to Support Children’s Learning, promotes some useful recommendations, starting with need for being optimistic about the potential of working with parents. The number of fixed penalty notices for poor attendance more than doubled last year to 646 but resorting to this should always be a last resort. Of all the legacies of the pandemic, it seems that school attendance is the most prevalent nationally and there are no quick wins here, rather a continued resolve that all children have a right to the 190 days of the school year in their entirety.
You will have received your school score card this week, perhaps more times than wanted. The excel document that is used to automatically generate these had a macro error that caused it not to run properly…twice. This has now been resolved but many apologies for the unwelcome series of score card mail-outs you may have received. During the coming year, I would like us to work together on reviewing the current score card with a view to ensuring the content is useful to you.
Our Primary Headteachers meeting is next Thursday 21st September with Secondary the following Wednesday. Our monthly breakfast meetings also start with Argyle School on the 29th September. A great opportunity to step out and reflect on the work of schools around us. There is a long term ahead, so I hope that you will make the space and time to join us.
Stephen Hall
Chief Executive Officer, Camden Learning
