Lincolnshire’s attendance priorities
Whilst good progress has been made over the past three years, there is more to do. This revised strategy builds on existing successes and reflects current priorities to further improve attendance outcomes. Lincolnshire’s six priorities are to:
- Improve overall attendance for all pupils
- Reduce persistent and severe absence
- Improve attendance outcomes for vulnerable groups
- Strengthen the use of data intelligence to inform targeted intervention
- Embed attendance within safeguarding practice
- Strengthen partnership working across services and schools
To support this, Lincolnshire has introduced a clear and consistent framework which categorises attendance and absence into bandings. This approach enables us to identify patterns, target support, address priorities and measure progress over time.
This strategy is aligned with wider Children’s Services priorities, recognising attendance as central to ensuring children can access education, achieve positive outcomes and feel a strong sense of belonging. These include the Family Help Strategy, SEND Local Offer, guidance for children with a social worker, the LSCP Neglect Strategy, Better Belonging programme, Inclusion Strategy, and Family Hubs Programme within our Best Start in Life initiative.
How will we achieve our priorities?
- foster a culture of belonging, inclusion and high expectations, for all children
- strengthen a system-wide commitment to attendance, as a shared responsibility by aligning multi-agency partners and delivering support in partnership with children and families, placing them at the centre of all interventions
- working alongside our Best Start Family Hubs to ensure staff are equipped to have confident, routine conversations with parents and carers about attendance, promoting positive habits from an early stage and encouraging engagement with schools where barriers arise
- implement a targeted, multi-agency approach to monitoring and tracking pupils with severe absence to ensure effective intervention and sustained improvements in attendance
- deliver attendance training across services, maintained schools and academies to build shared understanding and strengthen best practice in supporting good attendance, early identification, and professional curiosity around absence
- strengthen oversight of part-time timetables to ensure time limited use to support children back into full-time education
- support wider services to ensure attendance for vulnerable children is explicitly addressed within their plans, including SEND, Child in Need (CIN), Child Protection (CP), and Looked After Children (LAC)
- utilise live data feeds, including DfE “View Your Education Data”, to provide timely intelligence that supports targeted intervention and drives reductions in absence, specifically to identify cohorts such as those children with persistent absence
- routinely share attendance data, trends and emerging patterns with school leaders and attendance leads through our core offer of Targeted Support Meetings, as well as collectively through networks and training sessions
- celebrate and recognise positive attendance and areas of improvement