By Samantha Reed and
Michael
Bourne
Schools have been sharing daily attendance data with DfE and
making use of the Monitor Your School
Attendance (MYSA) service - a free, secure tool that helps
them visualise the data and monitor, manage and improve pupil
attendance.
Deputy head, Michael Bourne
uses MYSA data to tackle absence in a rural
community
I’m Mike, deputy head at a primary
school. I’ve been using DfE’s MYSA service to help
me have conversations with parents and staff about
attendance.
My
school
Being part of a small school comes
with its own set of advantages. We know each child personally and
we've got a good relationship with parents. My attendance
strategy is very much a people-driven process. I have meaningful
conversations that give me the context that data alone does not.
It's a blend of data, conversations and
commitment.
How I use the service in
practise
I use a combination of the DfE’s data
and our school Management Information System to analyse
attendance data and look out for emerging issues. My main focus
is spotting persistent absence and working out the reasons behind
it. I’m also interested in spotting those who might become
persistently absent to make sure they get extra support if they
need it.
The data on potential attendance
issues prompts conversations with colleagues and parents. These
conversations give a fuller overall picture of attendance. I have
the insight from the data and the context from talking to
parents.
The MYSA service is an
easy way to view data. The layout is simple, and it gives you the
key information up-front on one screen. It’s a live system, it’s
clear and you can drill down into the data. It’s user friendly,
you can navigate it all and do
comparisons.
Head teacher, Samantha Reed,
saves herself time by using DfE’s MYSA
service
I’m Sam, an assistant head and SENCO
at a rural secondary school. My school is in a rural area with a
diverse cohort of pupils. It’s a big farming community with 17
feeder primary schools.
My
school
Pupils living in rural areas brings a
whole range of additional challenges for attendance. Transport
and journey lengths is a key consideration for some pupils.
Students might miss the bus or their parent’s car could be in the
garage. They might get up in the morning and feel a unwell, so
they stay at home because the idea of picking up a sick child is
a significant barrier.
We’ve also struggled with attitudes
towards attendance since the Covid-19 pandemic. People were being
told to stay off with a sore throat, and we’re now working hard
to explain that this is no longer
acceptable.
How using the service has
helped us support our pupils
Having all the key information about a
pupil’s attendance data on one page has really encouraged me to
dig deeper when I need to. It’s great that it’s there in black
and white, on a single page.
It’s particularly useful to see how
many days it’s been since a pupil was last absence, like a
counter. It helps me identify when a pupil’s attendance dipped
because of an illness, compared to those who are regularly
absent. I used to have to count this up using our Management
Information System (MIS), so it’s great to have this in front of
me.
Getting persistent absence and severe
absent figures saves me a lot of time and is really important for
supporting absent pupils early in the
year.
Find out more about the Monitor Your School Attendance
service and how your school can
benefit.
