School Attendance Management Lead

Course introduction

The School Attendance Management Lead course has been written as a follow on for staff wanting to develop a greater level of understanding and take their role further and effectively manage school attendance and the attendance team.

This course will be looking at leading and managing attendance through the lens of the expectations placed on schools in ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance. This includes how to develop a school culture that promotes school attendance and ensure your policy is compliant and fit for purpose. There will also be opportunities to discuss specific challenges of the work and role with the trainer and to network with others.

What we will cover throughout the day

• Understand the Lead’s role for school attendance;

• Develop an attendance team that includes the local authority and external partners;

• Unpick an exemplary ‘model’ attendance school policy;

• Discuss the new attendance management expectations placed on schools;

• Know what attendance management best practice looks like;

• Understand how the schools’ procedures are recognised in an inspection;

• Unpick the use of an attendance audit and self-review tool;

• Ways to use attendance data to drive improvements;

• Look at working with external partners to improve attendance.

Trainers for this course

Victoria Franklin

Senior Education Welfare Consultant - CQSW ILM

Victoria Franklin is an Attendance Management Consultant working across all phases of education with a remit to raise whole school attendance. Victoria qualified from Bristol University a...s a social worker with a focus on education and has 30+ years of working in education settings including Local Authorities/Multi Academy Trusts and schools. Victoria has developed systems and procedures to help organisations become more effective in the management of attendance. (Including several Local Authorities holding authority wide specialist responsibility for school attendance improvement and data analysis.) The interface of where policy meets practice, and the use of data are particular areas of interest.

Victoria has developed and successfully implemented a strategy around coding to help schools understand and analyse the impact of coding decisions on attendance levels. Victoria is a freelance trainer and produces and delivers highly successful national training events for several training companies on attendance related issues and consistently achieves outstanding evaluations. She is a regular contributor to the Attendance Matters magazine.

Victoria is President of NASWE -National Association of Support workers in Education www.naswe.org.uk – a professional association promoting the welfare and school attendance of children since 1884. This involves meetings with the DFE to discuss policy and practice, being involved in consultation work for example working with Lord Soley regarding his proposed private members bill on regulations for Home Education and linking with other national organisations in areas of research, policy, and practice. Victoria is a member of INSA (International Network for School Attendance www.insa.network) and contributes to the INSA website as one of the UK (England) representatives.She took part as a presenter at the inaugural conference In Oslo in October 2019.

Other related interests include Chair of the Management Committee of Bristol Hospital Education service.Read more

See what others have to say about us

"Nicola was very knowledgeable and approachable and did a great job"

"Fantastic course! Nicola is incredibly passionate, professional and knowledgeable about youth mental health. I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions. Thank you!"

"Thank you Nicola, for making what can be a difficult and challenging subject easier to talk about. I learnt a great deal on ways to support young people!"

About the venue

Handy course logistics

• The course will run via Zoom from 9:30 am – 3:00 pm, however, the trainer will be available 15 minutes before and after the course times to answer any questions.
• You’ll receive mid-morning, lunch and afternoon breaks to re-energise.
• This course is designed to be interactive and inclusive. We welcome questions and discussions throughout and we want you to be comfortable and stress-free no matter where you join us from!
• Your course pack includes handouts, an M&S voucher for food, a snack, a pen and a notepad – we’ll send this to you before the day. Please note this is only for UK-based participants, international attendees will receive the pack via email.
• Additional links and information will be emailed to you before and during the course.
• This course is also available as an in-house / INSET training session at your school. Contact us for details.
• Please Note – the cost is per person