Agenda item

13.15

An overview of trends in absence from schools across Oxfordshire, underlying causes of persistent absence and particular areas of concern.

As a means of scrutinising school attendance in more depth and making recommendations that could help reduce absenteeism, the Committee is reminded that it agreed to undertake a deep dive into educational attainment in the early 2018.

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to identify initial areas of focus for this deep dive.

At its programme setting Meeting in July 2017, the Committee had identified School Absence as an issue of concern and agreed to add it to its work programme for a ‘deep dive’ investigation.  The Committee now had before them a report which provided data and background information, together with any preventative action currently being taken on rates of absence from schools across Oxfordshire.

The Committee heard that the County Attendance Team had recently recruited and would now consist of 3 county attendance officers and 2 school liason officers.  A pupil tracking officer and elective home education team would work as wider members of the team. 

Links with safeguarding included pathways being developed with Locality Community Support service (LCSS) to ensure consistency across the county and developing new pathways to share information through multi-agency working. - developing a Community Around the School offer.

The Pupil Missing Out working group were highlighting this is a bigger piece of work and a Missing person’s panel, a formal meeting held once a month had been established to identify strategies for pupils missing more than 3 times (multi-agency).  There were current concerns that not all staff had access to right systems.

Prevention activity

Data analysis and sharing was key to identifying the gaps and patterns in relation to school absence and the implementation of a targeted approach. This was however, reliant on accuracy of data coming from schools.  Schools were not always reporting children on reduced timetables.  Senior Officers were collaborating with the Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board to address how Reduced Timetable were being used in schools.  Only one third of schools had responded.

Enforcement

Parents could be prosecuted for their child’s non-attendance, although this was used as a last resort. The County attendance team challenged the measures and support school were putting in place before referral to the team. School attendance orders were primarily used around EHE. Not many were used.  Education supervision orders were used as a supportive measure to ensure multi-agency plans were adhered to. 4 members of staff (attendance officers and liaison officers) were working directly with 24 schools.

During discussion the following points were raised:

-        Secondary attendance was at a worrying level. Was there any exemplar practice that could be shared?

-        DfE changes authorised and unauthorised definition – were the figures consistent? –

-        Reduced timetables – if not on timetable authorised absence? Yes, but School attendance marking was at the discretion of the Head

-        Was there any data available on the length of absence for dental/medical appointments and trend in Oxfordshire?

-        Children in hospital would remain on school roll, but were registered with the hospital school, which was currently rated outstanding.

-        Paul Burnett was writing to schools who had not responded to the OSCB request for numbers on reduced timetables.

Following discussion the following areas of focus were indentified for the forthcoming deep dive investigation:

o    More in depth data on schools that were well performing and not (to inform school visits);

o    Why does YOS stand out way above the rest?

o    Anything more the LA can do to support education of persistent absence groups, particularly why YOS so high;

o    Health – absences in primary and secondary for illness reasons – higher than national average;

o    Absences for parents taking children out of school for holidays (look at service families);

o    Reasons for unauthorised absence;

o    Links between the LCSS and Attendance team ;  

o    Role of governors and reporting to governors.