Best Practice

Tackling the links between attendance and poverty

Poverty Pupil wellbeing Mental health Closing the gap Vulnerable children
What are the links between poverty and the attendance crisis in secondary schools and what best practice approaches can we employ to address these issues and support students?
Image: Adobe Stock

A quarter of students (24.6%) were persistently absent from secondary school during the autumn term 2023. These figures compare with an overall persistent absence rate of 12.7% before the pandemic (see SecEd, 2024).

 

Poverty and school absence

While poverty and disadvantage will not be a reality for every student facing attendance issues, it will be a genuine issue for many of these families. We know that social and economic upheaval since the pandemic has resulted in many more families struggling financially (Fitzpatrick et al, 2023; Lucas et al 2023). 

And the data indicates that there are links to be made between poverty, disadvantage, and poor school attendance. The attendance figures cited above are even worse for students on free schools meals (FSMs) with one third (33%) being persistently absent during autumn term (primary and secondary). This compares to 15.7% of non-FSM students.

It is an inconvenient truth that students eligible for FSMs are more than twice as likely as their affluent peers to be persistently absent from school. Why?

Poverty and disadvantage can create barriers to school attendance for a multitude of reasons:

  • Health: Poverty can have a known impact on health and wellbeing in families. If health is poor then illness for students or in the wider family will likely be a more serious and genuine barrier to attending school (Marmot, 2021).
  • Food: Poverty creates barriers to a healthy and balanced diet. The cost of living is having significant impact on low-income family’s access to food and healthy eating (Trussell Trust, 2023).
  • Hidden costs: Despite being supposedly free at the point of access, schools and state education still have costs – a genuine issue facing many low-income families (CPAG, 2023). To take just one example, some students will miss school on event and non-uniform days because they cannot afford to partake.
  • Neurological development: Poverty can have an impact on brain development and executive functioning (Blair & Raver, 2016; Harris, 2022). Students struggling to focus in school will arguably be less inclined to even want to attend.
  • School experience: Achieving academic success at school can be hard for some students in sustained or long-term disadvantage. Therefore, the experience of school will likely be a challenging one for my students (Wagmiller, 2015).

Finally, Klein et al (2020) investigated the extent to which various dimensions of socio-economic background (parental education, parental class, FSM registration, housing status, and neighbourhood deprivation) predict overall school absence and different reasons for absenteeism (truancy, sickness, family holidays and temporary exclusion). 

The research, involving more than 4,600 secondary school students in Scotland, found that all dimensions of socio-economic status were correlated with school absences.

Multiple measures were associated with truancy, sickness absences and exclusion – with social housing and low parental education identified as strongest risk factors.

 

Vulnerable Learners Supplement 2024: This article first appeared in SecEd's annual vulnerable learners supplement, which published in March and offers 20 pages of expert advice, insights, and case studies aimed at helping secondary schools to support their most vulnerable young people. Themes this year include persistent absence, poverty, SEND, behaviour, and exclusion. Find a free download via www.sec-ed.co.uk/content/downloads/supplement-ideas-to-support-your-vulnerable-learners 

 

What’s your attendance story?

The DfE recently announced (DfE, 2024) plans to legislate to require all schools to share their daily attendance data in a bid to help school leaders identify and respond to absence trends.

Measuring absence is only one mechanism in a school’s attendance strategy. Harvesting attendance data in isolation of interpretation is a pointless and time-consuming exercise. School leaders must consider what trends and patterns exist in the data in the context of their school environment.

Consider the story that your data tells you and what questions pastoral leaders and teachers therefore need to be asking. While FSMs and Pupil Premium labels have their drawbacks (see Harris, 2021a), this data should be understood in the context of attendance trends and used to consider what specific barriers to attendance and learning exist for disadvantaged students.

It is important that these are sense-checked rather than built on vague ideas or pre and misconceptions that we have heard from other schools or areas or even the national picture.

 

Leading attendance culture

A culture of good attendance doesn’t simply apply to students. I once served in a school where staff absence rates were poor. I recall a parent from a low-income household saying to me that “attendance isn’t that important if the teachers here don’t come in that often”.

It is essential for leaders to offer a clear vision for attendance in the school and that the importance of attendance is understood by all staff and stakeholders.

Consider the extent to which the high value of attending school is recognised and championed when visitors and students first access the school.

One aside – it is important to consider the extent to which celebrating positive attendance might have a detrimental impact on low-income families. Publicly rewarding 100% attendance in schools can adversely impact some students for whom 100% attendance is genuinely impossible – for example those with health complications that prevent regular school attendance.

Alternative approaches to this might include:

  • A focus on personalised affirmation for students that achieve improvements in attendance.
  • Celebrating whole-school or year-group improvements in the attendance.
  • Deploy attendance, pastoral and SEND staff skilled in supporting students and their families who can identify and affirm overcoming individual barriers to attendance.
  • Steer away from events or activities that could isolate or create further barriers for low income families (e.g. non-uniform days, reward trips).
  • Consult students on attendance policy, practice, rewards, and sanctions so that they understand the value of attendance but also so that disadvantaged students can give you a valuable insight into school strategies.

 

Teaching attendance culture

The role of classroom teachers and form tutors is important in addressing barriers to attendance that might exist because of poverty and other facets of disadvantage.

  • Ensure that teachers are supported to teach about the importance of attendance and its impact on attainment in their subject areas.
  • Work with teachers to think about the concepts and topics that need over-exposure in the curriculum for disadvantaged students. At Tees Valley Education we are working with SHINE to carry out research in this area, working with teachers and students to better diagnose the misconceptions that might exist due to missing school or because of poverty (see Harris, 2021b).
  • Equip teachers to follow up on absence and poor punctuality to lessons, ensuring that this is managed consistently and without discriminating against students.
  • Regularly revisit attendance policies, processes, and research through staff meetings and CPD programmes. Staff induction is also an important place to ensure that this is understood.

In one school I work alongside, teachers make use of “sorry we missed you” coloured slips in student exercise books. This has two aims. To acknowledge that the teacher has missed the student and wants them in the lesson, and to highlight to the student a specific learning target that they need to complete to address a subject knowledge gap.

 

Strategy for tackling disadvantage

Attendance policies and processes need to be informed by a wider strategy for tackling poverty and disadvantage in school. It is important that this strategy is rooted in a knowledge of the known needs of disadvantaged students and low-income families.

Marc Rowland (2022) challenges schools to secure a school-wide understanding of how disadvantage impacts on students’ learning and broader experiences in school.

This is important irrespective of the numbers of disadvantaged students in the school and is an important part of tackling absence for disadvantaged students. 

Marc Rowland has written extensively about this and with Unity Research School has produced a wide-range of blogs and resources to support school leaders and teachers in formulating their strategy for tackling educational disadvantage.

Research published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), meanwhile, shows that reading and attendance continue to be significant barriers to progress for disadvantaged students – this based on an analysis of schools’ Pupil Premium statements. 

The EEF has since produced a range of resources designed to support school leaders and teachers including an updated version of its guide to the Pupil Premium, a document for school leaders looking to maximise the impact of their spending (EEF, 2023).

At Tees Valley Education, a multi-academy trust in the North of England, we have made publicly available further information about our social justice and equity in education charter. The webpage (see further information) summarises the research-informed approaches we have adopted alongside information about how we work with other schools to develop their strategy for tackling the impact of poverty on learning, attendance, and other aspects of school life.

  • Sean Harris is a doctoral researcher with Teesside University investigating poverty and educational inequality. He is a trust improvement leader at Tees Valley Education in the North East of England. Visit www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/sean-harris 

 

Further information & resources