Report and presentation of the Director of Education

The report covers a presentation reviewing school attendance in Manchester in 2021/2022 and a summary looking at Manchester’s plans for the implementation of the new DFE guidance: Working together to Improve school attendance. The guidance is non-statutory, and has been produced to help schools, trusts, governing bodies, and local authorities maintain high levels of school attendance. Following public consultation earlier this year, and subject to Parliament, the Secretary of State has committed to this guidance becoming statutory by September 2023.

The presentation highlights the main implications of the new guidance and summarises Manchester’s strategic approach to improve school attendance in 2022/23.

The Committee received a report and presentation of the Director of Education which reviewed school attendance in Manchester in 2021/2022 and summarised Manchester’s strategic approach to improve school attendance in 2022/23.

The main points and themes within the presentation included:

• The importance of school attendance;
• The current climate in Manchester in 2021/2022;
• National policy context and new guidance;
• Local context;
• Strategic approach; and
• Next steps.

Some of the key points and themes that arose from the Committee’s discussions were:

• To welcome the positive attendance data;
• Variation in absence levels across different wards and whether the data was also broken down by age and different communities;
• Children with anxiety about attending school;
• Families where absence was part of a wider picture of family problems which needed to be addressed;
• Whether additional funding was available to tackle persistent absence;
• The cost-of-living crisis and the cost of school uniforms; and
• That childhood illnesses would be increasing now that people were mixing more again.

In response to a Member’s question on the extent to which persistent absence was condoned by the parents, the Statutory Lead (Attendance and Exclusions) informed Members that data was not available on this.  He highlighted that children could still be off school with COVID-19 and that this was still affecting attendance levels.  He advised that attendance data was broken down by sector and by Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) and that work would be taking place over the next year to analyse the data by gender, ethnicity and whether the child had a social worker.  He advised that the data was available broken down by school.  He outlined some of the help available for children who were missing school due to anxiety, including Early Help, THRIVE Hubs and the anxiety-based school avoidance pathway.

The Director of Education reported that there was a lower percentage of children with SEND and special school pupils returning to school and higher levels of anxiety within this group.  She advised that, although her service was pleased with the attendance levels last year, these had still not returned to pre-pandemic levels and that they wanted to get them back to the level that they were before the pandemic.  She advised that it was important to use all the resources available to tackle persistent absence, engaging with all the different organisations which had a relationship with the child and their family and working together to get them attending school regularly.  She also informed Members that additional funding of just over £1 million a year was being provided by the Department for Education (DfE) for the SAFE Project, to intervene with secondary age children who were at risk of entering the criminal justice system.

The Executive Member for Early Years, Children and Young People stated that he shared Members’ concerns about the cost-of-living crisis and the impact on children and families.   He advised that the Deputy Executive Member for Early Years, Children and Young People was working with the Education Business Partner on making schools more poverty-proof.  He advised that schools had a responsibility to make uniforms available as cheaply and easily accessible as possible and to help families who could not afford them and that an audit was taking place of how well different Manchester schools were doing on this.

In response to a Member’s question, the Statutory Lead (Attendance and Exclusions) reported that schools were good at identifying patterns of absence and understanding and working with local communities, for example, having their inset days on dates of religious festivals.  He advised that the additional breakdown of data which would be available next year would also assist with identifying patterns.  The Director of Education informed Members that targeted meetings between her service and individual schools provided the opportunity to look at the data, identify patterns of absence and challenge schools on their response.  The Senior Schools Quality Assurance Officer outlined how her service worked with schools to improve attendance, reduce persistent absence and provide early intervention for the most vulnerable pupils, including access to wider services.

The Chair expressed concern about absence rates for children with SEND and Looked After Children.  She also highlighted that some children had not returned to school after the pandemic, with families opting for Elective Home Education.  She expressed concern about homeless families being placed a long distance from their children’s school and the impact of this on school attendance.  She outlined some of the ways that families could be supported, for example, through Sure Start, and stated that billboards could be used to advise families how to access support.  She noted that the Committee periodically received reports on school exclusions.

Decision

To request that a breakdown of attendance data by school be circulated to Members of the Committee.