School Attendance & Children Missing Education - briefing on key changes for September 2024

This briefing aims to provide Headteachers, Senior Attendance Champions, Governors and Trust with an overview of the changes in the national framework for attendance and the support on offer from the Local Authority via the Attendance and Children Missing Education Teams.

1.   Revised Statutory Guidance & Legislation

The following guidance and legislation came into force on 19 August 2024:

• School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024: Modernising school attendance and admission registers and the associated requirements for schools
• The Education (Information About Individual Pupils) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2024: Mandating attendance data sharing by all state funded schools with both the Department for Education and the Local Authority.
• The Education (Penalty Notices) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2024: Creating a new National Framework of Penalty Notices (see Chapter 6 of the revised guidance).

This has resulted in updates to a number of existing national guidance documents:

• Working together to improve school attendance  
• Children missing education
• School suspensions and permanent exclusions
• Elective Home Education
• Providing remote education: guidance for schools.

2.   Key changes to 'Working Together to Improve School Attendance' and 'Children Missing Education' from 19 August 2024

Following the new regulations coming into force and the statutory guidance coming into effect, the Department for Education (DfE) has published an updated version of the 'Working together to improve school attendance' guidance. There are no policy changes in the document, but additional clarification has been provided in a small number of areas.

The DfE also published revisions to its Children Missing Education guidance to bring it in line with 'Working together to improve attendance' and the School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024. This guidance replaces the September 2016 version.

Action: It is important that school leaders understand the implications of the revised guidance. The key changes to the guidance have been summarised and can be found here.

3.   Data sharing & absence returns

In line with The Education (Information About Individual Pupils) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 and the requirements of 'Working together to improve school attendance', all schools are now legally required to share information from their registers with the DfE and the local authority.

Sharing data with the DfE

From the start of the 2024-25 academic year, schools have a duty to provide attendance information to the Department for Education (DfE) on request. Data indicates that as of 6^th September, over 380 have already signed up to share their daily attendance data with the DfE in line with statutory requirements.

Action: It is important that all schools ensure that they have completed this process and for those schools who have not, further guidance on how to share your data is available via this link: Share your daily school attendance data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Once you are sharing data with the DfE you will have access to a range of tools that will support you to analyse your data. The DfE has published guidance for schools, academy trusts and local authorities on using the monitor your school attendance tool.

Sharing data with the LA

Further, to facilitate timely collaborative working across partners, all schools are also required to share information from their registers with the local authority. As a minimum this includes:

• New Pupil and Deletion returns: notifying the local authority when a pupil's name is added to or deleted from the school admission register outside of standard transition times. For full details see paragraphs 211 and 219 of the statutory guidance. Schools currently fulfil these requirement via completion of a Deletion Return form and New Pupil Return forms.
• Attendance returns: providing the local authority with the names and addresses of all pupils of compulsory school age who fail to attend school regularly or have been absent for a continuous period of ten school days where their absence has been recorded with one or more of the codes statistically classified as unauthorised (G, N, O, and/or U).
• Sickness returns: providing the local authority with the full name and address of all pupils of compulsory school age who have been recorded with code I (illness) and who the school has reasonable grounds to believe will miss 15 days consecutively or cumulatively because of sickness.

Local authorities must agree the frequency that attendance returns are to be provided with all schools in their area. This should be no less frequently than once per calendar month.

As an LA, we want to reduce the administrative burden placed on schools as well as support them to meet with national requirements. As a result, we need schools to engage with both our local attendance data arrangements as well as the DfE collection of attendance data. This is because the DfE does not currently provide the facility to export data relating to sessional attendance codes which are required for the purpose of the sickness and attendance returns. As the DfE systems develop, we envisage that we will be able to cease the local collection of data and are providing feedback on proposed future development of the national system. Engaging with both systems simultaneously will not add to schools workloads nor compromise information security.

What do I need to do next?

Currently we have over 320 schools that are connected to the local attendance data sharing arrangements. If your school is not currently sharing data as part of the local arrangements, you will receive an e-mail from attendancedatacollection@norfolk.gov.uk within the next two weeks providing guidance on what you need to do next.

If you already provide attendance data to the LA via the local arrangements, please also contact attendancedatacollection@norfolk.gov.uk if:

1.     You have changed Management Information System provider over the Summer as this will impact on data collection.
2.     You are unsure of who we hold as your contact for the local data feed and/or would like to make a change to the contact.

Parental Responsibility Measures Attendance (PRMA) census for academic year 2023/24

We will be hosting a webinar and Q&A session at 10.30am on Thursday 19 September 2024 on MS Teams, to talk through the arrangements for this year's PRMA census return. During the webinar we will share the form and explain the data that needs to be captured. There will be an opportunity to ask questions and the collection process following the demonstration.

Action: As in previous years, we will continue to collect this data via an MS Form submission, this will be shared with all schools via the E-Bulletin that will be published on Tuesday 17 September 2024. The PRMA census must be submitted by the Local Authority by Friday 18 October 2024, so we ask that all schools complete the MS Form by Friday 11^th October 2024. This will allow a few days before the submission deadline for data submitted to be checked by the Attendance Team and allow us to come back to you with any questions, if required.

Book your place on the upcoming PRMA Census webinar and Q&A via the Norfolk County Council s4s website. There is no charge for this webcast and no limit to the number of delegates attending. We will look to record the demonstration but please be aware that there will be a short delay between the event and the recording being available on the website.

If you have any questions about the webinar or the PRMA census, please contact the team at csattendance@norfolk.gov.uk

4.   Revised local guidance

Children Missing Education

In light of the new changes, we have updated the CME policy and relevant forms. All of the updated information can be accessed via the Children Missing Education pages of the Schools and Learner Providers website: https://www.schools.norfolk.gov.uk/childrenmissingeducation

The form previously known as 'On Roll Notification' has been updated to 'New Pupil Return' to reflect the terminology and requirements of the revised guidance. Please note we will only be accepting notifications in this format. If you have previous versions of the form please delete.  All schools are required to notify the local authority within five days when a pupil's name is added to the admission register at a non-standard transition point. This duty does not apply when a pupil's name is entered in the admission register at a standard transition.

We have also made changes to how schools advise the LA of removals from roll. If the removal from roll date was prior to and including the 18^th August, schools will continue to use the Off Roll Notification  If the removal from roll date is from 19^th August onwards, schools are required to complete the new  Deletion return form. Links to both forms can be found on our webpage.

School Attendance

The school attendance pages of the Schools and Learner Providers website have also been updated to reflect changes to the national framework: School attendance - Norfolk Schools and Learning Providers - Norfolk County Council

In response to feedback received from schools as part of the consultation the Attendance Team ran last term, a new section has been added to provide quick and easily accessible links to forms and templates designed for schools to fulfil their responsibilities for attendance. It includes an updated model attendance policy and communication assets designed to support promotion of good school attendance with parents and carers.

The online referral form for legal intervention including penalty notices has also been updated in line with the new National Framework for Penalty Notices and the Support First Approach as outlined in the guidance.

For a short interim period, it will be necessary to operate two online referral routes as follows:

Any referrals for Penalty Notices for term time holidays or other unauthorised absence that occurred before 19 August should be submitted via the Fixed penalty notice referral form by Friday 27 September 2024.

All requests for legal intervention following casework and referrals for term time holiday absence taken after the 19 August should be submitted on the new form entitled Legal Intervention for school attendance referral form.  

5.   On-going support

Targeting Support Meetings

Targeting Support Meetings (TSMs) are essential for early identification and support of pupils with habitual attendance issues, requiring collaboration between schools, local authorities, and partners. Local authorities are expected to organise these meetings regularly with each school to build strong relationships, discuss overall trends and emerging trends in the school's attendance data, identify and agree on action plans for severely absent pupils, and discuss approaches for persistently absent pupils needing multi-agency responses.

Schools are expected to participate in these meetings in line with 'Working together to improve school attendance.' The number of meetings a school is expected to have is outlined within the DfE guidance and depends on the level of the attendance challenges in the school:

•    If your school's attendance levels were below the national average for your phase, it is expected that you book a TSM for each term
•     If your school's attendance levels were above national average for that phase, you may if you want only schedule one TSM for the academic year.

We would encourage all secondary schools in Norfolk to book a TSM for each term, whether above or below national average.

If your setting's attendance rates are above the national average for your phase and you wish to meet with us termly, you are welcome and invited to do so.

If your school is part of a trust that has an allocated Attendance and Entitlement Officer, an LA maintained specialist school or an independent school, you do not need to book through the online system as you will be contacted directly to arrange your TSMs.

You can download and view the TSM meeting record in Attendance Forms and Templates.

Booking your TSM

To book your TSMs for the academic year:

•  Visit the following page: NCC Targeting Support Meeting Bookings
•  Select the meeting type that applies to your school setting.
•  Select the date you wish to book in the calendar.
• Select a time from the available options.
•  Add your details into the required fields, ensuring to include the name of your school.
•  Select book and you will receive an email confirmation of your booking.

Please note:

•  If you wish other colleagues to attend, you can forward the meeting invitation.
• When booking a meeting for each term, you will need to repeat this process for each booking.
• If a date or time is unavailable that is because the slot is already booked, or the date falls outside of term-time based on the Norfolk calendar.

Attendance Duty line

The Attendance Team continues to be available to all schools via our Duty line and inbox. The phone line is open from 9am to 12pm Monday to Friday during term time and the inbox is monitored throughout the day.

Webinars

The DfE has produced a series of pre-recorded webinars to support schools and LAs with the implementation of the new guidance. You can access all of the webinars listed below using this link, or use the links below to access specific webinars.

• Working Together to Improve School Attendance: DfE guidance overview for schools 
• The Senior Attendance Champion role: school senior lead for attendance
• School attendance register: attendance and absence codes 
• Q & A - School attendance register: attendance and absence codes 
• Data Returns: sharing attendance information with local authorities and others 
• Effective Targeting Support Meetings between school and LA 
• National framework for penalty notices for school absence overview 
• School admission register: deletion from the school roll

Local Training

The Attendance Team will be hosting monthly webinars via MS Teams to provide a spotlight of key areas of practice as identified by Attendance Leads. The schedule of spotlight sessions for the whole academic year will be published later this month.  

Given the volume of changes and the statutory nature of the guidance, the first session will provide a general overview and act as a Q&A session for school staff. The webinar will be held on Thursday 12 September 2024, starting at 10.30am to join this event click here.