School Attendance Analysis Report 2023-24
North Ayrshire Council · 21 January 2025
Back to Cabinet — 21 January 2025 and its agenda
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NORTH AYRSHIRE COUNCIL 21 January 2025 Cabinet Title: School Attendance Analysis Report 2023-24 Purpose: To provide Cabinet with a summary analysis of school attendance statistics and trends in North Ayrshire and an update on current and future planned activity to improve attendance and reduce persistent absence. Recommendation: It is recommended that Cabinet: (a) Notes the contents of this report; and (b) Agrees to receive further updates, for example through the Standards and Quality Report and through a subsequent separate annual attendance report, as necessary. 1. Executive Summary 1.1 School attendance rates in Scotland, including North Ayrshire, have yet to recover fully to pre-pandemic levels, with a significant correlation between attendance and deprivation. North Ayrshire’s school attendance rate of 89.1% in 2023-24 reflects a slight improvement from the previous year but still ranks among the lowest in Scotland. 1.2 Persistent absence remains a critical challenge for North Ayrshire, with 37.9% of pupils missing more than 10% of possible attendances in 2023-24. While this is the highest rate in Scotland, it represents a 1.9 percentage point improvement from the previous year. 1.3 Scotland has prioritised improving attendance through national recommendations, increased data monitoring, and targeted support initiatives. Locally, North Ayrshire has implemented thematic workstreams focused on universal supports, policies and processes, targeted interventions, and partnership working. 1.4 Collaborative efforts and strategic actions have led to modest measurable improvements in attendance rates and reductions in persistent absence levels in North Ayrshire as of December 2024, when compared with the previous year. The overall attendance rate has risen to 89.8%, while persistent absence has decreased to 34.4%. 1.5 Recognising that there is still significant scope for further improvement, North Ayrshire aims to build on this progress through continued collaboration with Education Scotland, enhanced professional learning, further support for vulnerable groups, and strengthened partnerships. Attendance improvement will remain a service-wide priority embedded in school and quality improvement plans.
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2. Background 2.1 Attendance rates across Scotland were affected by the pandemic in 2020 and are still in the process of recovering to pre-Covid levels. Progress has been slower than anticipated. As a result, improving school attendance has become a significant priority, both nationally and locally. We know that lower levels of attendance can have an adverse impact on a young person’s level of participation, attainment, and ultimately future opportunities; it is therefore vital that schools do all they can to promote and ensure good attendance for all of our children and young people. 2.2 To reflect the increased focus on improving attendance, the Scottish Government (SG) took the decision to increase the detail and frequency of the national publication of attendance data through its inclusion within the Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland Report from biennially to annually, with the first of the new style reports published in the School education statistics section of the SG website in December 2023. 2.3 Attendance rates across Scotland and in North Ayrshire have declined overall when compared with the period before the pandemic. The graph below shows the overall attendance rates from 2016-17 to 2023-24. 2.4 In 2023-24, North Ayrshire’s overall attendance rate of 89.1% was ranked the fifth equal lowest in Scotland, although it should be noted that this has increased by 0.3 percentage points in comparison with the previous year when it was 88.8%. This is a faster rate of improvement than the national picture, where the attendance rate across the whole of Scotland increased by 0.1 percentage points from 90.2% to 90.3% over the same period. 2.5 There is evidence that areas of relatively higher deprivation, as measured by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), were particularly impacted by the Covid- 19 pandemic, both in terms of academic outcome and school attendance levels. In 2023-24, all of the local authorities with an attendance rate lower than North Ayrshire were what were previously known as Challenge Authorities. The graphs below illustrate the attendance levels of the nine Challenge Authorities over time. 92.6 92.1 91.4 88.8 89.1 93.3 93 92 90.2 90.3 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 2016/17 2018/19 2020/21 2022/23 2023/24 Overall Attendance Rate (%) 2016-2024 (NAC compared to Scotland) North Ayrshire Scotland
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2.6 When the overall attendance rate is compared against the other Challenge Authorities over the time period 2016-2024, North Ayrshire has maintained a broadly consistent comparative ranking of around fourth highest in this group. 2.7 Since 2022-23, in addition to overall attendance rates, SG now measures and publishes more detailed absence statistics, including levels of “persistent absence”, which is defined as an absence level of more than 10% of attendance openings across the school session (this equates to 19 days or more lost out of the 190 days of school education in each school year). 2.8 In 2023-24, the persistent absence level in North Ayrshire was 37.9%. This is the highest persistent absence level in Scotland and is significantly higher than the Scotland-wide figure of 31.4%. The table below shows how these statistics vary across the different sectors, both locally and nationally. North Ayrshire is clearly experiencing challenges with this measure, although there has been an overall reduction in persistent absence of 1.9 percentage points since 2022-23. Percentage of pupils who missed more than 10% of possible attendances: All sectors 22-23 All sectors 23-24 Primary 22-23 Primary 23-24 Secondary 22-23 Secondary 23-24 Special 22-23 Special 23-24 North Ayrshire 39.8 37.9 31.9 28.8 49.2 48.1 34.7 38 Scotland 32.5 31.4 25.6 23.9 41.0 40.6 38.6 37.7 2.9 Actions to improve school attendance across Scotland Improving school attendance has been identified as a priority policy area across Scotland. In November 2023, Education Scotland published a national report entitled Improving attendance: Understanding the issues. As part of this report, the following five national recommendations were identified: • Local authorities should carefully monitor their strategic and implementation plans for improving attendance or develop a plan where one is not in place • Put children and young people’s views at the centre of refreshed approaches 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 2016/17 2018/19 2020/21 2022/23 2023/24 Overall Attendance Rate (%) 2016-2024 (Challenge Authorities) Clackmannanshire Dundee City East Ayrshire Glasgow City Inverclyde North Ayrshire North Lanarkshire Renfrewshire West Dunbartonshire
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• Education Scotland, working with stakeholders and partners, should provide bespoke support for areas where improving levels of attendance remains a challenge • Approaches to effective tracking and monitoring attendance should be collated and shared • Education Scotland and Scottish Government should collaborate with the wider system to bring coherence to the work on improving attendance 2.10 Education Scotland published support materials on the National Improvement Hub in August 2024 to help schools and local authorities consider how to approach improving attendance effectively. Senior officers form North Ayrshire attended a national one day conference in November which explored support resources and the exemplification of effective strategies from across the country. A national Improving Attendance Quality Improvement Programme has been launched (with North Ayrshire hoping to participate in this in early 2025). 2.11 ADES Performance and Improvement Network established a national attendance network which meets monthly to enable key representatives from all local authorities to hear information about current research and evidence-led practice as well as to learn from each other and collaborate on designing effective local approaches. 2.12 Actions to improve school attendance in North Ayrshire In November 2023, Cabinet approved the annual Service Improvement Plan for 2023- 24 which introduced improving attendance as a key focus for improvement, following analysis of North Ayrshire attendance data for 2022-23. A Service Improvement Group, comprising members from across schools and the central team, was established to focus on supporting establishments to improve attendance and a full-day collaborative conference was held for head teachers early in session 2023-24 to explore the key issues, including: the national context and evidence base on attendance; local and national attendance data; stakeholder views on attendance; and experiences of supporting attendance from another local authority (Renfrewshire Council). 2.13 This was followed by collaborative discussions to gather areas of strength and development to help inform the North Ayrshire improvement action plan. This included an initial review of policy and further workshops to explore good practice, including partnership working within Greenwood and Garnock communities. The Service Improvement Group also looked further afield and considered the work of the Forth Valley Regional Improvement Collaborative in supporting establishments to understand and respond to emerging attendance issues. 2.14 Greenwood Academy’s work on improving attendance for pupils absent from school as a result of emotionally-based issues was recognised nationally and published on the National Improvement Hub in August 2024. The report is available through the following link: Improving engagement and attendance through pupil equity funding. Since the interventions, attendance and engagement have improved in Greenwood Academy, although this remains a priority, both at school and service-wide level. 2.15 Key improvement activities throughout session 2023-24 were summarised in the Service Standards and Quality Report, approved by Cabinet in August 2024. The summary data above in paragraphs 2.3 to 2.8 demonstrates the positive impact this work has begun to have on attendance levels in session 2023-24. The annual Service Improvement Plan for 2024-25 acknowledges that further work is required in this area
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and key high-level actions for session 2024-25 were approved by Cabinet in August 2024. 2.16 In the current academic session, improvement work for school attendance is coordinated by the Attendance Service Improvement Group and is organised under the following four thematic workstreams: • Universal supports • Policies, processes and data • Targeted interventions and supports for vulnerable groups • Partnership working Subgroups have been created to take forward each of these thematic areas. A summary of progress to date is as follows: 2.17 Universal supports The main focus has been on developing an awareness raising campaign and support materials for establishments. Key tasks completed include: • survey and analysis of key stakeholder views, including children and young people, parents/carers and partners; • gathering information about campaigns launched by other local authorities across Scotland and elsewhere to inform the initial development of our own approaches in North Ayrshire; • the creation and promotion of a public-facing website (glow blog) entitled Supporting School Attendance in North Ayrshire. This blog includes a range of resources which have been developed to support attendance and is accessible via the following link: https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/na/attendance/. 2.18 Policies, processes and data • Locally updated guidance to support establishments with the consistent use of SEEMIS attendance codes was launched in August 2024. • North Ayrshire School Attendance Policy was revised and shared with establishments in October 2024. • The existing NACED Power BI tool has been further enhanced to enable further scrutiny and analysis of attendance data at various levels. • A small test of change has been piloted in a primary school to enhance communication with parents/carers via more regular telephone calls. This has resulted in improved attendance in the P1 cohort. 2.19 Targeted interventions and supports for vulnerable groups • The subgroup has gathered evidence-based practice on reducing persistent absence including the use of approaches to respond to emotionally based school non-attendance. A presentation to support establishments with this is in the final stages of development. • A staged process/tool that supports identification, assessment and support for attendance at the earliest stages is in development. 2.20 Partnership working A collaborative session has taken place with key partners, including HSCP colleagues, CAMHS, third sector and connected communities, where local gaps and needs were explored. Further partners have been identified and a short-life working group has been established.
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2.21 Current snapshot of attendance in session 2024-25 In order to give Cabinet a sense of the impact of the current actions described above as well as the various specific targeted approaches being undertaken in individual schools as part of their school improvement plans, the following snapshot data is provided, which shows that progress continues to be made on improving attendance levels across the service. Overall NAC attendance rate by December (comparison between Dec 23 and Dec 24) Cumulative, by December 2023 Cumulative, by December 2024 Movement Overall attendance rate 89.4% 89.8% Improving Primary attendance rate 92.1% 92.3% Improving Secondary attendance rate 86.5% 86.9% Improving Overall NAC persistent absence levels by December (comparison between Dec 23 and Dec 24) Cumulative, by December 2023 Cumulative, by December 2024 Movement Overall persistent absence 37.5% 34.4% Reducing Primary persistent absence 29.1% 26.4% Reducing Secondary persistent absence 46.9% 43.3% Reducing 2.22 Planned future work In North Ayrshire, plans are in place for further work across all four thematic areas as follows: Universal supports – collaborative work with Education Scotland to develop local approaches to promoting improved attendance in North Ayrshire schools, including participation in the next round of the National Attendance Quality Improvement Project; Policies, processes and data – professional learning to provide practical support to establishments in the consistent recording and monitoring of school attendance; Targeted interventions and supports for vulnerable groups – finalisation of guidance to support further reduction in persistent absence and practical, networked implementation support for establishments, particularly in relation to emotionally-based school non- attendance; Partnership working – develop a directory which includes signposting to available interventions and other support approaches from local partners, with the aim of ensuring equity of access across North Ayrshire. 2.23 Overarching all of this specific work will continue to be a strong service-wide focus on improving attendance, which will remain a regular discussion point at head teacher meetings and remain an important focus of quality improvement visits. Underpinning the service-level work, schools will continue to work on the implementation of attendance improvement activities as identified in their School Improvement Plans. 3. Proposals 3.1 It is recommended Cabinet: (a) Notes the contents of this report; and (b) Agrees to receive further updates, for example through the Standards and Quality Report and through a subsequent separate annual attendance report, as necessary.
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4. Implications/Socio-economic Duty Financial 4.1 None. Human Resources 4.2 None. Legal 4.3 None. Equality/Socio-economic 4.4 None. Climate Change and Carbon 4.5 None. Key Priorities 4.6 Council priorities: The focus of the Education Service is to align with the Council Plan 2023-28 strategic aim to “transition to a wellbeing economy, delivering prosperity, wellbeing and resilience for local people” and more specifically “improving educational attainment and achievement and closing the attainment gap” activities. The extent to which this is achieved will be further enhanced through improved attendance levels in our schools. Community Wealth Building 4.7 Better educational outcomes for children young people and adults, as well as increased capacity building and resilience in communities are required to underpin a strong local economy. 5. Consultation 5.1 There has been no specific consultation on the contents of this report. Sam Anson Executive Director For further information please contact Andrew McClelland, Head of Service (Education) and Chief Education Officer, on 01294 324413. Background Papers (Relevant background papers are provided via embedded links within the document.)