Opinion: Solving the school attendance crisis with a supportive culture
Ali Guryel, Executive Chairman and CEO of Bromcom, on how management information systems (MIS) can make a difference..
Bromcom has decades of experience in supplying MIS hardware platforms and network services to local authority schools in the UK. It currently serves more than 4,000 schools and 2m users across the UK and Europe.
Since the relaxation of restrictions imposed during the height of the pandemic, there have been concerns around an increase of pupils with high levels of absence. In fact, most schools (70%) have seen an increase in pupil absences over the past two years, according to a survey of 498 UK schools.
Photo by CDC
The research shows there is general agreement that the damage done by the pandemic to children’s mental health and well-being, the relationships between schools and parents and the overall culture of school attendance will take years to fix.
A major contributing factor to absences is term-time holidays. The research found that 68% of schools have seen an increase in absence due to holidays taken in term time. Whilst a new national framework is to be introduced by the DfE in August 2024 to increase fines for five or more days unauthorised absence, of the schools surveyed some 80% said the increase will make no difference and families will continue to book holidays during term time.
Also, many schools have seen a drop in attendance on Fridays where some families will choose to have a long weekend, prompting schools to believe the perception among parents is that children no longer need to go into school every day. The strong partnership between home and school has deteriorated significantly.
One school said the most impactful driver of the absence problem is the ‘seismic shift’ in many parents’ attitudes to schools. So where possible, schools must demonstrate a genuine desire to understand families concerns, often with increased sensitivity and care. But they must also act with professional curiosity to remove barriers to learning and reduce absence.
A tool that is being implemented by schools to tackle the persistent attendance problem is management information systems (MIS). The research found that 74% of schools agree or significantly agree that their MIS provides the reporting tools and data to help track and manage student attendance.
Parent portals within a modern cloud-based MIS can provide real-time data on a child’s attendance via a web browser or app and can make an enormous difference in the quality of communications and parent satisfaction. This transparency helps parents stay informed and encourages them to take an active role in ensuring their child attends school regularly. It can help to address the parental disengagement we are seeing and allows for improved academic outcomes, and increased satisfaction among students, parents and staff alike.
Parents are granted access to attendance, behaviour, assessment and student reports, and important communications. Crucially, any potential truancy problems can be detected early and prevented. Through their portal, parents can access real time attendance history and current lesson data. They are also kept up to date live as to the attendance of their child for any period and they can see any potential areas for engagement with their child or the school.
This type of parent engagement is vital to improving attendance and fostering positive attitudes towards school policy is likely to result in consistent student attendance.
Staff in schools do amazing work to encourage and support their pupils to attend well. They are united by the common problems they face and their recognition that on their own, schools can only make so much difference. What will make a difference over time will be the dedication of schools in rebuilding relationships, restoring confidence, fostering a supportive culture, raising expectations, and using their systems and data in increasingly innovative ways to keep them on track.
The full findings of the survey can be found in the white paper, ‘Solving the post-pandemic school attendance crisis’.
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