About this consultation

What has changed

The School Attendance Team previously aligned to Early Help Family Support within Children’s Services, has moved over to Access and Inclusion within the Education and Early Years Department.

The current team structure (8 Officers and 1 Senior Practitioner) remains the same, with the only difference being that they will now fall under the Head of Service for Access and Inclusion – Cathy Braun.

What does this mean for schools

Your named officer aligned to your school will not change for this academic year.

Any open cases or commitment the service has with your school (service level agreements) will continue as previously agreed. Our current service provision through the traded and universal service will continue till July 2021.

If you have (or plan to) purchase the traded service, this will be for the summer term initially. This is so we can consult with schools and partners in readiness for a revised policy and service delivery from 1 September 2021.

Consultation

We are consulting all schools during the first half of the summer term in relation to the following areas of the service:

  1. Traded Service (preventative)
  2. Universal Service (statutory)
  3. Proposed amendment to the Southend Borough Council’s Code of Conduct for Issuing Penalty Notices The Education (Penalty Notices) Regulation 2004 and subsequent The Education (Amendment) Regulations 2013

We invite comments by Headteachers completing the surveys on the sections below by 5pm on Friday 28 May 2021. We welcome your feedback against these three areas relating to what is working well, areas that could be improved, and how we can work with schools and families differently to remove barriers to attending school and reduce persistent absence.

As a reminder, the current service delivery model is:

Traded (preventative)

Universal (statutory)

To support and challenge children and families through a variety of preventative interventions:

  • Level 1 – school identification and intervention only
  • Attendance review meetings to help schools identify students with irregular attendance – advice and guidance given on coding and students identified to take to Level 2.
  • Level 2 –
    1. officer attends meeting in school (or virtual) with parent, young person, and school to discuss absence and establish any barriers to learning/attending school. Plan, attendance target, and date for review agreed. Considerations for SEND, health, EHFSA and other signposting captured as part of discussion.
    2. If target met at review (usually 4 weeks), case closes, unless further need identified. If not met, decision made to either review again (some progress) or move to level 3 (little to no progress)
  • Level 3 –
    1. Individual family casework to engage and remove barriers
    2. Where barriers extend beyond attendance officer completes an early help family support assessment (if parent agrees)
    3. Link in with other agencies to be sure all professionals are working together for the good of the family.
  • Level 4 & 5 –The preparation of all evidence and paperwork for cases being presenting to Court for irregular attendance.
  • School interventions as individually agreed, such as:
    1. attendance panels,
    2. late gates
  • Investigation with all schools of children with chronic persistent absence <30% attendance
  • Register reviews (LA maintained only)
  • Data reporting agreement between the LA and all schools for all irregular attendees (for the majority of schools this is provided through B2B)
  • Issuing of penalty notices in accordance with the local Code of Conduct
    1. Monitoring payment of penalty notices
    2. Legal intervention if the penalty notice is not paid (in discussion with schools and legal services)
  • Legal interventions for persistent non-attendance
    1. Commencing with Pupil Planning Meetings held with School, parent, child, officer, and Senior Practitioner. (Level 4)
    2. Attendance and presentation of cases at Court (Level 5)
    3. for schools not purchasing the traded service schools must independently prepare all evidence to be presented to the Court evidencing school interventions and communications with parents to increase pupil attendance. Head Teacher to be available to attend Court.


We are also proposing some amendments to the current code of conduct for issuing Penalty Notices. To read the current published version please visit the Council Website.

You can find details of the consultation and proposed arrangements in the consultation document

What happens next

Once we have the views of schools and their experiences we aim to provide a summary of the initial feedback in our ‘consultation summary’ which will be posted on this page after the consultation closes. This will inform the future service redesign, policy and practice for both our statutory and traded service response to reducing pupil absence in Southend schools and settings.

In addition, the Consultation will inform the proposed amendments to the current code of conduct for issuing penalty notices. If a common agreement cannot be found relating to this legal requirement, we will continue to work to the published and previously agreed document (see above for link).

Who do I contact if I have further questions or concerns?

Your linked Attendance Officer for your school remains the first point of contact for any general questions you may have. If you have a specific question about this consultation, you can contact Jacqui Lipyeat School Attendance Team Leader by emailing jacquilipyeat@southend.gov.uk or Cathy Braun Head of Access and Inclusion 01702 215066 cathybraun@southend.gov.uk to discuss any areas in more detail.

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Consultation has concluded