Help individual pupils with attendance, head says

Data shows about 18% of pupils were persistently absent in 2024-25

The headteacher of a school highlighted by the government for its high attendance has said focusing on "individual students" is the key to improving.

Simon Graham runs St Edmund's Catholic School in Portsmouth, which has an absence rate of 4.7% - below England's average of 7.1%.

It is one of the initial 21 sites selected by the Department for Education as a national attendance and behaviour hub.

The hubs will offer support to improve struggling schools through training sessions, events and open days.

Data showed about 18% of pupils were persistently absent in the 2024-25 school year, which remains higher than the pre-Covid levels of about 11%.

As a result the education secretary Bridget Phillipson has called for schools and parents to do more to get children into classrooms at the start of the 2025 term.

Barriers to education

Mr Graham said: "If you provide the right environment for children and the right incentive for children to want to come to school and a real sense of belonging and ownership for children in their education they'll want to be there."

He said this was achieved by "making sure you have bespoke packages that are appropriate to them".

St Edmund's set up a mental health and wellbeing suite prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, with a team of five staff.

He said it had "flourished" in the years since and had been a way of helping children struggling to cope in a mainstream school setting.

Mr Graham said there was "not an exact formula" to tackle attendance issues, but targeting the barriers affecting individual children was one way that schools could help.

He said: "For some children the uniform is a barrier, or not having enough food or the right things for school.

"If we can use our funds to break down that barrier, we can change that child's whole life and access to education."

He added that when his school addressed poor attendance with parents they spoke about hours of learning missed rather than percentages, and this seems to have had an impact.

"Parents want the best for their children and children want to be successful, let's not pretend otherwise," he added.