Poor attendance has dramatic effect on GCSE results
A report by the Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza, which looked at the relationship between school attendance and academic attainment, has shown that poor attendance has a dramatic relationship with GCSE results.
While 78% of all children who were rarely absent in both years passed at least 5 GCSEs including English and maths, only 36% of children who were persistently absent in both years and just 5% of children who were severely absent in both years reached this same standard.
More than half (54%) of pupils who were persistently absent in Year 10 and then rarely absent in Year 11 passed at least 5 GCSEs including English and maths, compared to 36% of pupils who were persistently absent in both years.
The report says that there needs to be a reset in the culture around school attendance. This can only be achieved if high expectations of consistent school attendance is established. It says that school leaders need to be equipped with the very best knowledge around both the reasons behind increased absences and the strategies to employ to bring their absence rates down.
The report recommends that every school appoint a member of the Senior Leadership Team to manage their attendance policy. Their duties should extend beyond reviewing and implementing the attendance policy to include regular data check-ins to compare the school attendance rates with similar schools, hosting staff meetings to discuss how the school can support children on the path to persistent or severe absenteeism, and being the point of contact for families whose children have some of the lowest rates of attendance.
The report also says that governors should be given access to attendance data which is benchmarked against similar schools; tracks the attendance trajectories of children with histories of absenteeism; and can be broken down to individual days or year groups. They should use this data to hold schools to account and challenge them, where necessary, on their attendance patterns.
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