What became difficult before they stopped coming to school?
Updated: Oct 12
Nearly one in five Year 8 pupils met the threshold for persistent absence. The useful question for schools is often what became difficult to access before a learner stopped coming in regularly. |
Some attendance problems begin while a child is still coming to school. They start arriving late, avoiding a particular lesson, spending more time in the pastoral office or struggling with transitions. Attendance might remain relatively stable for a while, even as the child's experience of school becomes increasingly difficult.
By the time a learner meets the threshold for persistent absence, we can tell exactly how much education they've missed. We may have a much less developed understanding of what made attending, participating or returning increasingly difficult in the first place.
And if we're serious about improving attendance, that earlier story deserves our attention.
In Growing Up in the 2020s, nearly one in five Year 8 pupils met the threshold for persistent absence. The report also identified substantially higher rates of lateness and persistent absence among socioeconomically disadvantaged young people, alongside inequalities in belonging, engagement, mental health and learning.
These findings should make us curious about what children are experiencing, the pressures they're managing and how accessible we're making education.
For some families, the barriers are largely outside school. Poverty, housing, transport, caring responsibilities, family health and wider instability can all make regular attendance difficult. For other children, school itself has become increasingly hard to navigate. They may be struggling with peer relationships, inaccessible learning, repeated failure, sensory demands, anxiety or conflict with adults.
Often, several pressures are operating together. And sometimes the experience of being absent creates further difficulties, as children return to unfamiliar work, changed relationships and a growing sense of being behind.
What has become inaccessible?
At Navigate, Facilitating Access encourages us to examine what learners need to meet our expectations and what might be preventing them from doing so.
A young person might understand perfectly well that they're expected to attend school every day while finding particular parts of the school experience increasingly difficult to manage.
Think about the learner who regularly avoids a particular lesson. We might record the absence, follow up with the family and reinforce the expectation to attend. But understanding what happens immediately before that lesson could give us much more useful information.
Perhaps the work has become inaccessible, a peer relationship is causing distress or the learner is anticipating another experience of failure or embarrassment. We need to understand what changes on the days they manage to attend successfully and what support makes those days possible.
This is where pupil voice, family engagement and the knowledge held by classroom staff become enormously valuable. Looking at patterns across lessons, transitions, relationships and times of day can help us identify barriers that might otherwise be overlooked.
Understanding development and the biology of behaviour is important too. Stress can affect attention, planning, emotional regulation and a learner's ability to ask for help. A child may know what they're expected to do while struggling to access the skills needed to manage it.
Sometimes the response involves making learning more accessible, supporting a difficult transition, creating a predictable relationship or teaching a learner how to seek help before becoming overwhelmed. Sometimes it requires practical support or coordination with services beyond school. We can maintain high expectations while being thoughtful about what children and families need to reach them.
Working with families
Family engagement can make an enormous difference to how well we understand attendance difficulties. We need to consider how accessible we're making those relationships too. Working patterns, transport, language, literacy, technology, family circumstances and previous experiences of education or other services can all affect how families engage.
A parent who has received repeated calls about poor attendance may already feel anxious, ashamed or frustrated. If our conversations focus entirely on what hasn't happened, we may struggle to understand what is actually getting in the way.
Asking what mornings look like, what has changed and what would make attending easier can open up much more useful conversations.
Families often understand parts of a child's experience that schools cannot see, while school staff may recognise patterns that aren't visible at home. Bringing that knowledge together helps us develop realistic plans and review whether they're working.
Protecting the route back
We also need to pay attention to what happens when children return. A learner whose attendance has become fragile may be worried about missed work, questions from peers, difficult relationships or the response they'll receive from adults. We should be thinking carefully about how we welcome them, what they'll be expected to manage and how we help them experience some early success.
A predictable adult, support with a difficult transition, an accessible first task or a plan for catching up can make returning more manageable. Individual circumstances may require more coordinated support and carefully reviewed adjustments. It's also worth considering what we measure along the way.
A child attending a lesson they've been avoiding, arriving more consistently, managing a difficult transition or asking for help earlier may be showing meaningful progress. So might a family becoming more comfortable sharing concerns and working with school.
Sustained attendance remains an important outcome, and those earlier changes can help us understand whether we're making progress towards it.
There is a responsibility for leaders here too. Attendance reviews should bring together the figures with what we know about children's experiences. Patterns of lateness, lesson avoidance, internal truancy, removals and disengagement may give us opportunities to intervene before attendance deteriorates further.
With so many young people experiencing difficulties with attendance, and significant inequalities already visible by Year 8, we need systems that help us recognise barriers early and respond in ways that make education more accessible.
By the time a child is persistently absent, something may have been difficult for a considerable amount of time.
Perhaps our attendance conversations should begin with what has become difficult, what we've understood about why, and what we can do to make education accessible again.
Pass it on: Explore our free Facilitating Access, Family Engagement and Safe Spaces resources on We Navigate Togetherto help schools understand barriers, strengthen relationships and make expectations more accessible.
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