Executive Summary
This report is an updated version of our previous thematic report published in January 2024 focusing on attendance in secondary schools. These updated findings are based on inspection evidence and engagement with the schools who had cameos in the previous report, as well as an additional five schools that have seen improvements in attendance over the past twelve months. It also includes analysis of the recently published national attendance data. Updates to this report will be in blue text to make it easy for readers to identify changes.
In the best cases, schools have maintained a strong focus on improving pupils’ attendance and have identified attendance as an important whole-school priority. In the updated cameos, we have identified a few new approaches schools have implemented that have had a positive impact on improving attendance.
Schools continue to have concerns about the challenges for those pupils who live within the three-mile radius of school and therefore do not get access to free school transport. Most leaders we talked to said that this remains a very important barrier to improving attendance. They also noted that this often impacts disproportionately on those pupils who are eligible for free school meals. An additional challenge identified by school leaders is Year 11 exams. Given that examinations take place early in May, it is challenging for schools to maintain Year 11 pupils’ attendance, when pupils are keen to stay at home to revise. All of the schools we talked to indicated that they see a notable decline in Year 11 attendance during this period, especially where schools have worked hard during the year to improve the attendance of this year group in particular.
Whilst local authorities have continued to prioritise improving attendance, in a minority of instances, this work has not had a sufficient impact. The support and challenge for improving attendance remains too variable across Wales. A few school leaders also noted a challenge where some local authorities will not issue Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) and this is restricting their ability to challenge families to improve pupils’ attendance.
When we published this report in January 2024, we identified that the data Welsh Government publishes around attendance does not provide sufficient detail for schools to make important comparisons, for example between groups of pupils and year groups. The absence of a more detailed analysis continues to limit schools’ ability to fully evaluate the impact of their work, make comparisons and to identify important weaknesses in performance.