FOI request details

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Request

Subject: School Attendance

Reference: WBC-FOI-00600

Please share the local authorities strategic approach to improving attendance for the whole borough?

How many professionals work within your School Attendance Support Team?

How many primary school children in your borough are 'persistently absent' from school? (as of 23.01.2023)

How many secondary school children in your borough are 'persistently absent' from school? (as of 23.01.2023)

Please share all of the details of the Early Help work that the LA provide families to tackle the causes of absenteeism and unblock the barriers to attendance?

How many fines have the local authority served for non-school attendance? Please provide a breakdown of holiday fines and non-school attendance fines? (Since 01.09.2022)

Response

Part Disclosed - 6 February 2023

Request for Information - WBC-FOI-00600 - School Attendance

I refer to your request for information received on 30 January 2023. Please see the information below in response to your request: -

1.Please share the local authorities strategic approach to improving attendance for the whole borough?

Wandsworth's strategy to improve attendance is focused on 'support first' for families, which aims to maximise the opportunities to engage parents and for them to access the right support, at the right time, in the right place, by the right people. Wandsworth also promotes a 'think attendance' approach whereby all professionals working with families are expected to be aware of any attendance issues affecting pupils and work together across Children's Services along with partners to reduce absences from school.

2.How many professionals work within your School Attendance Support Team?

9.4 FTE (full time equivalent).

3.How many primary school children in your borough are 'persistently absent' from school? (as of 23.01.2023)

Please note that Wandsworth Council does not hold this information.

4.How many secondary school children in your borough are 'persistently absent' from school? (as of 23.01.2023)

We do not hold this information.

5. Please share all of the details of the Early Help work that the LA provide families to tackle the causes of absenteeism and unblock the barriers to attendance?

The Early Help offer is one that supports families at the earliest point of identifying a need for targeted support. We offer family support to tackle difficulties families may be facing before requiring more specialist interventions. Our work includes carrying out an assessment of need and included in this assessment is information about school attendance. We offer direct work with children and families to address the reasons behind poor school attendance and where necessary will act as an advocate for the child to negotiate successful reintegration plans where absence or poor school attendance has been a pattern. We also offer one to one parenting support and make referrals to parenting programmes as appropriate to support parents in strengthening their parenting role.

We expect all children to have 100% attendance and to ensure that we support good school attendance and to protect our most vulnerable pupils we work closely with the family, schools and the Education Welfare Service jointly reviewing attendance throughout our interventions. For alll Early Help assessments where attendance is below the expected level of 90% an improvement a plan of improvement is included as part of the Early Help Plan.

Our work with children and families is consent based and therefore families can withdraw consent at any time throughout the intervention. As a way of further ensuring that our most vulnerable children with less than 90% attendance are tracked at the end of our intervention we close once discussions have taken place with the network involved and where applicable Education Welfare to agree which Professional within the network will continue to lead on attendance. Consideration is always given to whether there are safeguarding risks that need to be followed up before closure.

6.How many fines have the local authority served for non-school attendance? Please provide a breakdown of holiday fines and non-school attendance fines? (Since 01.09.2022)

Holiday fines - 287

Non-school attendance fines - 3

I hope this information meets your needs. If you do not understand the information provided or wish to discuss anything further, please feel free to contact us.

Please note, all material provided by the Council in response to your request for information is for your personal, non-commercial use. The Council reserves all rights in the copyright of the information provided. Any unauthorised copying or adaptation of the information without express written confirmation from The Council may constitute an infringement of copyright. Any intention to re-use this information commercially may require consent. Please forward any requests for re-use of information to the FOI officer.

If you are dissatisfied with the information provided in relation to your request, you may make representations to the Information and Transparency Manager. Any such request for an internal review should be made within 40 days from today's date. Correspondence should be addressed to: FOIW@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision at: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/

Regards,

FOI and DPA Officer

FOIW@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk

Please note that our responses were accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of release, and have not subsequently been updated. This information should be considered an historical record only.