Poor school attendance and persistent absence have been on the increase in post-pandemic schooling. We recently hosted a well-received webinar with schools across the country discussing the key driving factors of this phenomenon. We identified that education organisations may also be interested in understanding what's going on with attendance in schools. On the 26th of March, we explored how education organisations' work links with attendance, discussed why it could be useful to evidence their impact on attendance, and grappled with how they can evidence impact on attendance.
We were joined by expert panellists who talked about their experience collecting attendance data, the enablers, challenges and considerations they have had to make in relation to this.
Please see below for a brief outline of what the session contained:
You can watch our school focused webinar on attendance here and you can find our report on 'Understanding Attendance: Findings on the drivers of pupil absence from over 30,000 young people in England' here.
Impact and Systems Manager
With a passion for ensuring young people have every opportunity to thrive in education and beyond, Siân joined the Jamie’s Farm team in March 2023. She is responsible for managing and reporting on impact data across 6 farms. Bringing data to life alongside the real stories of young people visiting the farms is what Siân enjoys most, as well as supporting staff and teachers to get the most out of Jamie’s Farms’ systems. Before Jamie’s Farm, Siân worked for the Trussell Trust, supporting food banks with operations, systems and training so they could serve their communities effectively.
Investment Director
Jake Farrell is an Investment Director at Impetus. As an organisation Impetus provides long term unrestricted funding and capacity building support to partner organisations; school engagement is a key theme of Impetus’ recent grant rounds relating to Social and Emotional Learning and school exclusion. Prior to working for Impetus Jake was the Head of Programme Quality and Impact at The Access Project, a widening participation charity providing tutoring and mentoring to disadvantaged young people.
Director of Research, Impact and Influence
Jenny is the Director of Research, Impact and Influence at The Difference. The Difference delivers CPD to school leaders on whole school inclusion to drive improvements in student level outcomes around exclusions, attendance and wellbeing in school. They research what makes for effective practice around inclusion and work in coalition with other organisations to identify and campaign for policy recommendations that can support schools to improve inclusive approaches. Jenny is a policy researcher with specialisms in exclusions, safeguarding and wellbeing research in education.
Senior Policy Lead
James is the Senior Policy Lead for the education charity Football Beyond Borders (FBB). He works closely with FBB's young people, youth practitioners and impact team to produce evidence, advocate and lobby for systems change which centres on the importance of trusted adult relationships for all young people.
Following the launch of our first Understanding Attendance report into the drivers of our pupil absence in England, this follow-up event shared what we’re learning from schools about how to sustainably improve attendance.
Last year we launched our Understanding Attendance national research project to help schools and trusts identify the drivers behind low attendance in their contexts and what initiatives they can put in place to address this. On the 18th of January, we explored our initial findings of our report in this webinar with attendance experts.
Tutoring can have a powerful impact on pupils. We know what kind of impact it can have and how to implement tutoring successfully. On the 14th of December we explored how to use tutoring effectively.
Want to hear more about ImpactEd Evaluation? Get in touch for a conversation with a member of our team.