An inner-London primary school is tackling persistent absence rates by calling in parents for “attendance awareness courses” on the long-term impact of missing lessons.
Netley Primary School, in Camden, says it has improved attendance rates for 75 per cent of pupils whose parents participated in the courses, with parents also avoiding fines in the process.
The school’s work is being highlighted in a report to Camden council as it looks to share best practice across the borough, which has particularly stubborn absence rates.
One in five pupils in Camden are persistently absent – missing 10 per cent of sessions a year – according to Camden Learning, a school-led improvement organisation.
‘Overprotective’ parents
Across the capital, Camden ranks 29th out of 32 boroughs for worst primary attendance rates and 30th for secondary school absence.
The council issued 602 fixed penalty notices for absence last year.
The borough also has the highest sickness absence rates in inner London.
Gareth Morris, headteacher at Netley Primary School, said that although parents were “very aspirational”, they were “very overprotective as well”.
“If there’s a slight cold or it’s a little bit wet outside, the parents are a little bit nervous about their children, so can be a little bit overcautious.
“We realised that actually, rather than going straight to the fixed penalty notices, we need some more support to understand the issues.”
Morris and his family support worker, Simone Sarosh-Cambridge, started to offer parents facing a fine for their child’s poor attendance the chance to take part in their awareness course instead.
‘Very simple, but very in depth’
The four-hour sessions take place once a week, after school drop-off. They involve parents learning about the impact persistent absence can have on their child’s chances of getting into university, and on their future wages.
Parents are also shown a sequence of a train, where all children begin in the first carriage. Those who miss a day of school move back a carriage, until they are much further behind their peers.
One parent, Rubena Islam, who took part in the course last year after her six-year-old son frequently missed school, said: “It was very simple, but very in depth… it was so easy to see in front of you.
“Parents were a bit confused that, because every child has a different way of learning, different pace of learning, if they moved back so much, how are they going to catch up?”
Another activity involves the parents doing a jigsaw puzzle, before realising that some of the pieces of the puzzle are missing.
“This highlights the anxiety that their children feel when they are not able to succeed because they have missed learning,” Morris said. Of the 12 parents offered the awareness course, eight took part.
Those families have seen their child’s attendance improve from below 90 per cent to above 95 per cent, Morris said. The other four families were issued with fines.
Through conversations during the sessions, parents also shared details of the barriers their children were facing to attend school, including issues around healthy diet, poverty and medical needs.
Family support workers ‘critical’
Netley Primary’s initiative was held up as an example of best practice by Camden council earlier this month. It will also feature in a guide being drawn up by Camden Learning for schools across the borough, published in the new year.
Chris Roberts, senior advisor for safeguarding and inclusion at Camden Learning, said it was a “really good idea” but consideration of whether it was “scalable” was needed.
He said family support workers like Sarosh-Cambridge, funded by the Reeves Foundation, were “worth their weight in gold”.
“Having the capacity within schools to build relationships with parents and build the relationships of trust – I think it’s critical to generating that sense of belonging that children and families need to be able to make those movements on attendance,” Roberts said.
The Department for Education is reportedly considering calls by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) to introduce mandatory absence awareness courses.
Dan Lilley, from the CSJ, said courses were “a highly scalable solution to a problem that is wrecking young people’s lives”.
But education charity Impetus has warned schools to take a cautious approach to implementing such an initiative.
Senior policy advisor at Impetus Dr Carlie Goldsmith said: “While a course that supports parents and builds relationships could be very effective, a badly implemented or coercive approach to attendance awareness courses risks further damaging the already fractured relationship between parents and schools.
“As initiatives like this become more common, robust evaluation will be particularly important.”
Your thoughts