Harrogate High School improves absence rate by nearly a quarter

Harrogate High School is an 11–16 secondary comprehensive school in North Yorkshire. In 2023/24, the school’s attendance rate was 86.7% (13.3% absence), compared with the national average of 7.1%. In 2024/25, attendance has risen to 89.8%, a 3.1 percentage point increase in a single year. This improvement has been achieved under the leadership of Jane Wearing, the school’s Deputy Head who has generously agreed to be interviewed for this case study.

Harrogate High School is currently participating in ImpactEd Evaluation's Understanding Attendance research project, which provided the school with further insights into the drivers impacting pupil attendance . Through their involvement in the project, Harrogate High School is beginning to make encouraging progress in addressing attendance challenges. ImpactEd Evaluation is eager to share their journey so far to help inform and inspire others who may be tackling similar issues.

This case study highlights what the school is implementing, along with some of the early signs of impact and wider indicators of progress that are emerging.

The Attendance Strategy

The leadership team at Harrogate High School implemented a structured five-point plan to improve attendance. However, alongside this plan, two key principles are currently driving the improvements.

The first is recognising that although an attendance strategy is in place, the most significant change needed is a culture shift — one that involves pupils, parents, and staff in a collective movement. For the school, this means not seeing attendance in isolation but as part of a broader focus on personal development and school culture.

Secondly, the school has been relentless in promoting the idea that “attendance is everyone’s business”. Drawing on the pupil voice element of the Understanding Attendance project, Jane convinced colleagues of the need for change. She now runs an “attendance spotlight” each week during staff briefings to highlight the real-world consequences of pupils missing school, sharing examples and case studies to show why “it’s really important for the kids.”

Both of these principles have supported her mission to improve attendance at Harrogate High School.

School leadership led the cultural changes and attendance improvements through a five-point plan:

1. Understanding the drivers behind attendance
2. Changing the attention given to and recognition around attendance
3. Using attendance data more effectively
4. Improving sense of belonging
5. Utilising the capacity and expertise of staff members

Using the reporting from the Understanding Attendance project, the school was able to identify several drivers that lead to poor attendance. The reports highlighted that some pupils had poor engagement, driven by low feelings around the value of school in their lives and feeling like staff did not care about them; both of which led to pupils not attending school. Upon learning more, everyone has committed to intervening with any potential drivers as early as possible.

To tackle the drivers identified, school leadership realised it was imperative to have both parents and pupils on board to move attendance forward, especially as the school sought to change the attention given to and recognition around attendance. For parents, this was addressed by making a conscious effort to improve communication.

"We used to get complaints every time we sent out any letters about attendance, and we don't anymore... we're being more subtle in how we communicate."

The previous communication approach focused on the percentage of a pupil’s attendance; however, the new messaging is more personal and child-centric, discussing the importance of attending every lesson and its impact, helping to better connect with parents.

For pupils, the old recognition system meant the same students were consistently receiving praise for achieving over 96% attendance, as well as those that made improvements and managed to achieve attendance over 90%. Jane recognised that “there was no real way for kids with quite poor attendance to get any recognition."

The recent changes focused on ensuring that as many pupils as possible receive recognition for their attendance.

To recognise more pupils, the school adopted the third point in the plan: using data more effectively to deploy a system they call "positive noticing." The school switched from looking at overall attendance percentage to focusing on broken weeks (how many consecutive weeks of attendance a pupil had) to find ways to praise pupils with lower attendance.

“If a child had five broken weeks in the first term but is now down to two broken weeks in the second term, then they get recognition for that."

This approach emphasised progress over perfection, democratising the playing field to allow more children to be recognised. Additionally, form tutors are now more involved, consistently engaging in conversations with pupils about attendance, making it clear that they are happy to see pupils.

Improving Pupil Belonging

The Autumn 2024 Understanding Attendance pupil survey revealed that pupils at Harrogate Highschool reported a comparatively low sense of belonging when measured against national benchmarks. While school leadership had noticed this anecdotally, the evidence coming directly from pupil voice was compelling. Improving pupil belonging is now a strategic priority at Harrogate High School. Several approaches were introduced to move this forward. Outside of the curriculum, there was focus on increasing trips and visits and improving reward and sanctions systems. This involved introducing a "CARES passport," which combines the school values of Courage, Aspiration, Respect, Equality and Self-Control—encouraging pupils to capture all the different activities they do, and all their skills and opportunities. Within the curriculum, there were changes to PSE lessons to strengthen the knowledge and skills that support attendance. The sense of belonging is already improving, as Jane recounts that during a recent school improvement visit: "they really noted how much our culture has improved."

The final strand of the school’s attendance strategy has focused on utilising the capacity and expertise of staff members as effectively as possible. While staffing and resourcing can be barriers to improving attendance, she has been intentional with her allocation of resources.

"What I've tried to do is use the resource I have more effectively. Stripping back people's roles, being really clear on what they're doing around attendance."

Examples of changes the school has implemented in this area include:

• The Family Support Worker being supported to prioritise their capacity, specifically targeting pupils whose current attendance is around 50% but whose attendance the school feels can be improved with the right support.
• The Attendance Officer receiving safeguarding training to help them contextualise the cases of the pupils they are working with and improve the quality of conversations with     parents.
• The School Nurse prioritising early intervention work around mental health, with day-to-day first aid being more strictly confined to break times, and being delegated to other appropriately trained staff members when appropriate.
• The School Nurse helping parents understand which illnesses and ailments are not valid reasons for their child to be absent from school and being firm enough to communicate when attendance is required given the nature of the illness.

Not only is attendance ‘everyone’s business’, specific members of staff are also being equipped with the expertise to support parents, carers and pupils.

Results & Lessons Learned

The five-strand strategy is still in the early stages of implementation. However, its joined-up approach and the commitment of staff members driving it forward has already begun to yield positive results, including noticeable improvements in attendance.

Improvements to attendance by year group highlight some particularly encouraging progress. Year10's current attendance rate stands at 88.3%, an increase from 87.1% last year when they were in Year 9. Similarly, Year 11 has improved from 86.3% last year to 87.5% this year. Both improvements divert from the national trend, which shows reduced attendance across Years 10 and 11.

While social-emotional change can be difficult to quantify, the most recent Understanding Attendance surveys show early indications that the strategy is leading to improvements in the following areas: sense of school membership, grit, and school engagement.

One notable area of improvement is this year's Year 10 work experience week compared to that of the previous academic year. Last year's cohort had between 20-25 pupils who refused to attend their work experience placements, while there were only two refusers this year. [This was] "an indication that we're getting something right, but it's about trying to find those soft indicators to prove it. We aren't quite there yet, but we're definitely better than we were."

If you are interested in finding out how Understanding Attendance can support your school or Trust this year, get in touch with us by emailing hello@impactedgroup.uk