: Improving the Attendance of Secondary SEND Learners Working collaboratively with students and families to raise attendance

In this blog, Sarah Robinson, Assistant Principal and SENCo at The Hathershaw College, talks about the challenges faced with the attendance of students in receipt of an EHCP and SEND support and how working collaboratively with the attendance team, students and parents has led to improvements.

The Hathershaw College has higher than average numbers of students in receipt of an EHCP, with the same pattern reflected in those designated as SEND Support. For a period of time, the attendance of students with an additional need was below the equivalent national data, despite the school having good attendance overall. We know that attendance has a direct link to attainment and life chances with students, therefore Sarah Robinson, Assistant Principal/​SENDCO and Andy Potts Assistant Principal in charge of attendance led the challenge of closing the gap.

The school already has an attendance team and a team of Learning Support Assistants (LSA) each of whom are key workers for 15 students. Both teams have extensive knowledge of the pupils, their families and learning needs therefore the collaboration of these teams and their approaches was the key to raising attendance to above national for all SEND groups.

Documents with the details of students who were persistently absent were available to both teams to identify issues and target intervention accordingly. This was then scrutinised by the Assistant Principal/​SENDCo and then discussed with the students key LSA who in turn discussed the concerns with parents and crucially the students.

These discussions, if appropriate, led to the use of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and Emotional Based School Avoidance (EBSA) questionnaire, which highlighted particular needs that were easily fixed. Attendance is linked closely to provision and we knew that if we got this right for our most vulnerable students, they would want to come to school.

This corresponds with the EEF’s Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools guidance report, which recommends that schools build an ongoing, holistic understanding of pupils and their needs.

Attendance as we know proves to be one of our biggest challenges in education, however with the added difficulties that our SEND students experience, it is vital that we continue to get our students in to school. The school is not going to stop there, sharing of good practice is pivotal to success and we have signed up to work with the attendance hub. We are continuing to build a holistic understanding of our pupils and families, allowing us to diagnose specific needs, improving attendance and closing the gaps between students with SEND and those without.

Figure 1 above highlights how the college compares to national data. The data shows how both our SEN support, ECHP students now rank well against national figures for these two groups and are well above the national data in most year groups. This is testament to the strategic work, which is implemented at the college. The challenge now is to narrow the attainment gap between students with SEND and other groups.