Understanding Attendance: Insight to Action
Addressing attendance is complex. There are so many factors influencing whether or not a child attends every day. How they slept, their morning routine, and their relationships with friends and teachers all make a difference.
We believe that it is by understanding these wider factors that school leaders can most effectively target support to meet their pupils’ needs
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About the project
In 2023 ImpactEd Group launched Understanding Attendance – a national research project seeking to understand the relationship between pupils’ social, emotional and behavioural measures and their attendance rates. In the last two years, over 70,000 pupils took part across England.
Our research to date has shed light on factors such as the importance of belonging and the second transition between Year 7 to Year 8. This evidence base has informed the development of a targeted question set and sophisticated approach to benchmarking. Schools participating in the project will use this to get deeper insight.
How have we developed the project?
Our research so far indicates that attendance is highly contextual. There are no quick fixes to pupil absence, and schools and trusts need tailored insights that help them understand the drivers of attendance in their setting.
Through the project schools and Trusts can:
1. Explore actionable data
Co-developed with schools and an academic research team, partners use our pupil and parent online surveys to get insights into actionable areas influencing pupils’ attendance. The core question set covers the family and home environment, school environment, and adult and peer relationships. Schools can also opt in to exploring additional factors such as inclusion, wellbeing and incentives.
2. Contextual benchmarking
Our research has revealed the profound importance of age and stage on attendance. Our approach to benchmarking by year group, attendance band, and other pupil groups helps schools to best identify how to target and tailor support.
3. Get the most out of the data
We know that attendance is everyone’s role in a school. Each data collection window, in addition to an overview report, schools receive a reporting pack that contains insights differentiated by key pupil groups to help all leaders contextualise the data, explore the impact of intersectionality, take action and draw further insights from national benchmarks.
Throughout the year, online community events, a termly newsletter and regular sharing practice opportunities also further support partners to implement initiatives to tackle their attendance challenges.
Acting on the data
School and trust insights generated through the project are only as useful as the action they inform. Throughout the project, partners receive both 1:1 partnership manager support, and access to support from the wider community.
Partnership Manager Support
Advice collecting data
Interpreting reports
Using insights for action
Technical setup and onboarding
Wider Cohort Support
Research and sharing practice events
Group insights of cohort data by target pupil groups
Half termly newsletter
Case studies
Opportunities to connect others to share challenges and successes
How does it work?
Our national diagnostic aims to provide targeted insights into factors affecting attendance. Using short pupil and parent facing questionnaires, the diagnostic reports on three domains – family and home environment, school environment, and adult and peer relationships.
Integrate with school management information systems
We integrate automatically with school management information systems, so that all diagnostic data can be accessed at an individual level and by pupil subgroups.
Data collected twice in the year
Collected through two data collection windows, results are contextually benchmarked against the current cohort so that you are comparing like with like throughout the school year.
Combine pupils' diagnostic and attendance data
We bring together the diagnostic with your attendance data, helping you to identify target groups compared to our national research cohort, and focusing in on the specific factors that most affect particular attendance bands.
Insights
School and trust reports are generated each data collection and partners have a 1:1 meeting with their partnership manager to go through the results and explore next steps. A Project Handbook further supports schools to understand how they can use the data in their context.
1:1 support and cohort level support
We provide dedicated 1:1 support from a school partnership manager, who will hold planning and insights calls to help you interpret and act on your findings.
The wider cohort support also includes optional half termly online community events, sharing real-life practice and examples. Partners also have access to our research insights through a half termly newsletter, case studies and opportunities to connect with others in the research cohort.
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Register to be part of this year's research cohort.
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