Changes to Working Together to Improve School Attendance, published February 2024

For ease, the changes are as follows in this addition compared to that published in May 2022. 

Following feedback the guidance has been updated to: 

• Be clearer on the link between improving attendance and wider school culture, including the importance of working in partnership with families to find supportive routes to improve attendance. 
• Reflect changes to the law on keeping school attendance and admission registers including a revised set of codes, granting leaves of absence and access to, and sharing of, attendance information introduced through the School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024.
• Set out the new National Framework for issuing penalty notices and reflect changes to the law introduced through the Education (Penalty Notices) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2024.
• Change ‘parenting contracts’ for attendance to ‘attendance contracts’ to better reflect the agreement between parents, schools and/or local authorities.

The expectations of schools have been updated to:

• Update the section on pupils who are prevented from attending school due to physical or mental ill health to be clear where schools’ role starts and ends, provide further clarification around medical evidence, additional support for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and part-time timetables. 
• Explain the new requirements for schools on data sharing introduced through the Education (Information about Individual Pupils) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2024.
• Provide clarification of the expectations of schools’ senior attendance champions.
• Expect schools to inform a pupil’s youth offending team worker of any unexplained absences. 

The expectations of local authorities have been updated to: 

• Provide further detail to clarify additional attendance services that may be traded with schools, local authority responsibilities in relation to cross-border pupils and how to hold effective Targeting Support Meetings.
• Allow flexibility in how local authorities work with independent schools to better suit the needs of different local independent schools.
• Provider further detail on cross partnership ownership of attendance improvement.