What Does The Research Say?

Attendance Works

This is a charitable site based in the USA whose mission is "to advance student success and help close equity gaps by reducing chronic absence".  Its resources are freely available for us to use in the UK although they do generally require some customisation as the terminology in US education is a little different to the UK.  Nevertheless they produce some useful resources and publish research on how to reduce chronic absence.   Their research page can be accessed directly by clicking here.

Children's Commissioner Reports

The Children's Commissioner, Dame Rachel D'Souza (who was previously a MAT CEO) has taken a particular interest in school attendance issues.  She has written about this and you can find her article here, together with links to the associated resources.

 She published an interim report in March 2022 entitled 'Where are England's Children'.  Essentially this report supports the DfE focus on attendance and proposed changes in how attendance is managed, outlined in the White Paper of April 2022.  The report makes interesting reading but is unlikely to require any changes at school level, as the focus is more on ensuring that children who are not on a school roll are still engaged with the education system.

In July 2022 a follow-up report entitled 'Back Into School: New Insights Into School Absence' was published which contains some interesting information on patterns of absence and is well worth a read.

In September 2022 a guide for attendance officers was published to help them to identify attendance trends and intervene effectively.

In December 2022 a further report was published which demonstrates the links between education history and attendance and can "act as the roadmap for targetting limited attendance resources".

In November 2023 a further report was published with discussed the link between school attendance and GCSE grades.

Behavioural Economics

This is an up-and-coming field of economics/psychology that is gaining a lot of ground, particularly in government departments (its known colloquially in government as 'The Nudge Unit'.  Increasingly the theory behind behavioural economics is being applied successfully to improving attendance and you will now see that there is a paper on its use available on the bottom of the relatively new 'DfE Improving Attendance' web page.  To find out more about behavioural economics, take a look at this video:

This paper on tackling student absenteeism is a practical example of applying the theory and its very easy to use the findings and adapt our correspondence accordingly.  This paper also explains well how to amend parental letters to make use of behavioural economics.  This blog post from the Behaviour Insights Team tackles attendance beyond simply schools, but the principles are the same.   This paper specifically describes some research on improving attendance for EYFS pupils using the principles of behavioural economics.

Those of you that came to the first attendance leads day in 2019/20 may well also remember that I did a presentation on behavioural economics and gave some handouts to use.  You can access the resources, including my PowerPoint presentation, by clicking here.

Finally, you might enjoy this guide to Behavioural Insights for Education.

EEF Report on Efficacy of Attendance Interventions

This is quite a lengthy report which is based on a rapid evidence assessment.  Unfortunately the essence of the report is that there is no consistently proven attendance intervention that can be guaranteed to make a significant difference!

Good Health and Good Attendance

Since illness is the largest cause of absence, this paper on the link between good health and good attendance is well worth a read.

Improving Attendance:  Good Practice for Schools and Multi-Academy Trusts

This is a relatively new online resource produced by the DfE and regularly updated.  It contains video recordings of a series of webinars where best practice across a number of different types of schools and MATs is discussed.  Many of the organisations featured are members of the new National Attendance Alliance.  It also contains information about any forthcoming webinars so that you can sign up to join them live.  Finally, it contains a growing number of links to related case studies and other attendance resources.  IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU ADD THIS WEB PAGE TO YOUR FAVOURITES AND CHECK BACK TO IT FREQUENTLY.  Click here to go directly to the resource.

Ofsted Research Document

Ofsted published some research into securing good attendance and reducing persistent absence in February 2022.  Whilst none of it's content is likely to be a great surprise, it does make interesting reading, particularly if you are in the Ofsted window.

Parental Engagement

Research indicates that good parental engagement is one of the keys to improving attendance.  The EEF has recently produced a guidance report on how to improve parental engagement and you can access this to download by clicking here.  You can also read about how parent/teacher home visits can have a positive effect on attendance by clicking here.  Finally, some practical from Attendance Matters can be found here and here.

The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath

This is a book that is well worth a read.  Although not specifically about attendance or even schools, there is lots of psychology that can be applied in this book to improve attendance (they are probably using behavioural economics too).  In particular take note of the Fresh Start Effect in relation to resetting attendance.  You can find out more about this by clicking here.  If you wish to purchase a copy via Amazon, click on the book cover below.

Rewarding Good Attendance

Traditionally we have always thought it good practice to reward good attendance but research cautions us against the wisdom of this.  Have a read of this research paper entitled The Demotivating Effect of Retrospective Rewards.  (Click here for the BBC News write-up on the research.) Take a look also that this inciteful article published in TES 

Using Chronic Absence Data

Attendance Works have produced a guide on using chronic absence data to improve conditions for learning (September 2019)

DfE Report on Persistent Unauthorised Absence

This report looks at the above for students of secondary age.    (May 2023)

The folder below contains many of the papers mentioned on this page.