The School Attendance Support Team
Who are the school attendance support team and what do they do
The School Attendance Support Team are a small team made up of Attendance Support Workers and Penalty Notices and Legal Officers.
Together they provide strategic support to schools and partner agencies, identifying cohorts where specific and targeted interventions are required, and ensuring there is a robust plan in place for all severely absent pupils.
How support is provided
The team provide support through the following key areas.
Communication and advice
The team regularly bring schools together to communicate messages, provide advice and share best practice between schools and trusts within the area. Please see below for more information.
Targeting support meetings
They hold regular (minimally termly) conversations with schools, using their attendance data to identify pupils and cohorts at risk of poor attendance and agree targeted actions and access to services for those pupils.
Multi-disciplinary support for families
The team do not typically work directly with pupils or their families as case holders. However, the team will signpost and support families and schools to access services that are able to work intensively with families to provide practical whole-family support, where needed. These teams endeavour to address the causes of absences and problem-solve the barriers to attendance.
Legal intervention
Taking forward attendance legal intervention (using the full range of local authority measures to support attendance) where voluntary support has not been successful or engaged with. Offering advice and support for cases where legal intervention has not resulted in a sustained improvement in attendance. This includes working with wider colleagues to ensure support via a Parenting Order, or acting as a Local Authority Supervising Officer in relation to an Education Supervision Order.
Available support
Drop-in sessions
We host regular drop-in sessions to answer any questions that schools have. The dates and times of these are communicated directly with schools via a calendar invite.
Attendance forums
Termly attendance forums provide an opportunity for school attendance leads to receive updates from the team, identify current themes, share good practice, and explore how we can work together to address some of the common challenges that schools are facing.
The forums are held via Teams between 11am and 12:30pm and will be on the following dates:
- 16 September 2026 (rescheduled one from the last academic year)
- 11 November 2026
- 9 March 2027
- 19 May 2027
A calendar invite is sent directly to all school attendance leads, and any additional colleagues who have signed-up for access to these. If details have changed, please contact your link worker to update them.
Newsletter and resources
Sharing updates and resources to local schools from the DfE and LA, useful articles, and initiatives to improve school attendance. For example, sharing information on assessment tools, EBSNA, resources to address barriers to attendance, and tools to support ‘assess, plan, do, review’ processes in schools.
Training
Offering bespoke training either on an individual, or group basis. For example, attendance processes, Fast Track to Attendance, training on legal processes.