What are Everyone’s Responsibilities?

The new statutory duties mean schools have key responsibilities and they must:

• Ensure families have access to the academy’s Attendance Policy which clearly states expectations and processes for absence and support.
• Have a whole school culture that promotes the benefits of good attendance – promoting and encouraging attendance is everyone’s responsibility.
• Record registers accurately using statutory coding and have robust daily processes to follow up on all absences quickly.
• We must not keep AM and PM registration periods open for more than 30 minutes and if students arrive after that point they must be marked absent for the whole session, using an authorised or unauthorised absence code (students must sign in to be counted for fire registers).  This means it is vital that students arrive for school on time or in exceptional situations before the registration period closes, as we will have no choice but to mark them absent for the rest of the session (morning or afternoon) which will affect their overall absence level. 
• Proactively use data to identify students who are at risk of becoming persistently absent as per the new National Framework Thresholds (see below).
• Work with parents/families about reasons for all types of absence (authorised and unauthorised) and explore to identify if support needs to be offered to remove barriers to attendance or if a legal sanction is appropriate. 
• Follow a ‘support first’ approach prior to considering legal action, except if the absence is for a reason that does not require support e.g. term time holidays or absence for specific recreational, leisure etc., which is an automatic legal sanction.
• Where support is not engaged with or does not work, use multi-agency support to provide formal and targeted support or refer to the local authority for legal action or statutory children’s services.

Under the new legislation and guidance, Schools/Academies MUST also now share data with the DfE daily, and with the Local Authority when they are admitted or deleted from the school roll.  Also, data must be shared with the LA once:

• A child’s attendance shows they have had 10 continuous absent sessions,
• If a child has 15 days of illness (continuous or accumulative) or they are likely to have (this could lead to education being provided by the LA if health professional evidence is clear the child cannot attend the school)

Definition of Parent/Carer – The term ‘Parent/Carer’ is used to address those with responsibilities for children.  For the purposes of education and attendance matters and identifying those with legal responsibilities for student care and attendance:

‘Parents’ are determined as per Section 576 of the Education Act 1996 which defines a parent as:

• the natural parents of a child, whether they are married or not;
• anyone who although not a natural parent, has parental responsibility for a child;
• any person who has care of a child or young person i.e., lives with and looks after the child.

Responsibilities of Parents/carers:

As well as the legal duty to ensure their child receives education, parents who enroll their child in a school, must also ensure regular attendance (including if their child is receiving education in an alternative education setting) by encouraging their child and working with the school to discuss barriers to attendance and not permitting absence from school without good reason.

Regular attendance means every day the school is open, except if a statutory reason for absence applies.  Other responsibilities are:

• Notifying the academy of absence on the first day, or as soon as possible after, when their child is unable to attend for exceptional reasons e.g., illness. This should be prior to the registers opening.
• Requesting all planned absence in advance and only request leave of absence for exceptional circumstances.
• Booking medical appointments outside of the school day wherever possible, and where this is not possible, they should limit the amount of time their child is absent from school on the day of that appointment e.g., working around the registration points to avoid absence being recorded.
• Ensuring contact information held by the school is up to date and notify them of changes.
• Proactively engage in support offered to prevent their child from becoming or where they are persistently or severely absent, to avoid more formalised support being required.

Children/Pupils/Students Responsibilities are:

• Aspire to attend every day on time and ready to learn unless there are exceptional causes/reasons for absence.
• Ensure someone (parent or a member of staff) knows they are having difficulties or are worried about school so that conversations can take place to support them.