Welcome to the Attendance Support Team: Our Role

The Attendance Support Team deliver, amongst other things, a statutory service provided by the Local Authority. This work is concerned primarily with supporting schools and academies to optimise pupil attendance to support attainment, safeguard children and ensure that children access their full educational entitlement.

We enforce the relevant legislation with the issuing of Penalty Notices and prosecutions of parents for non-school attendance. We also issue Penalty Notices to parents when their children are seen in public during school hours during the first five days of Exclusion.

We carry out this work through the Attendance Panel process, gathering evidence and in cases that progress to Court, are Witnesses to the child or young person's poor attendance on behalf of the school.

Through experienced professional key workers, we contribute to Early Intervention, Safeguarding and School Improvement. We oversee pupil tracking and transfer functions to prevent children being out of full-time education through Children Missing Education processes. We provide statutory services to prevent child exploitation (performance licences, chaperones licences and work permits).

Additionally, The Attendance Support Team helps to ensure effective case work is delivered with vulnerable families where poor attendance is an entrenched key feature and Social Care is not involved due to thresholds not triggering access. This may be through using the Early Help Assessment and Team Around the Family methodology adopted by the Key Working Service.

The Attendance Support Team also delivers tracking and placing services to pupils after their period of formal schooling ends that may be vulnerable to NEET status.

The Attendance Support Team contributes to schools' Ofsted requirements pertaining to children being removed from roll, missing education, on part time timetables, persistent absentees, at risk of exclusion and those with medical needs.

The Attendance Support Team accesses mature networks and out of borough liaison to meet schools and children's wider participation needs. All schools and academies are entitled to Penalty Notice and Prosecution work at no charge. Non-commissioning academies are required to provide all evidence of documentation, support and intervention (including home visits) delivered by school prior to requesting a legal remedy to poor attendance from the Participation Key Work Team within Residents Services.

Commissioning academies have the generation of this evidence, to a criminal standard as required by the Courts, delivered as part of the Service Level Agreement.