Why We Need to Make a Distinction
Differentiating between school engagement and school attendance is fundamental to further understanding school avoidance. School avoidance is nested within ‘school attendance’, because it is currently measured using attendance tracking systems. Through the Nova programme and this toolkit, it is hoped that schools can begin to develop their own systems of recognising school avoidance before it becomes evident through School Attendance Problems (SAPs).
As mentioned earlier, it is important to get the terminology right and use the correct language for children and young people when working with school avoidance. While school engagement and attendance go hand in hand, they are separate concepts.
School avoidance support plans should always aim to improve engagement first and foremost. Attendance can improve when children, young people, and their families feel a sense of belonging and connection to the school. This is achieved through improved engagement. School engagement can be understood as a developmental process comprising student thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviours concerning their school environment and lifelong learning trajectory. The child or young person directly experiences the benefits of showing up/attending every day. We can see how a cyclical pattern emerges, where a child or young person’s sense of belonging is hampered by their attendance rates and vice versa.
A key finding from the Understanding Attendance project is that children’s and young people’s sense of belonging at school has a statistically significant impact on their attendance rates. There is a growing understanding that schools also need to support learners in developing a sense of belonging, connectivity, and engagement with school and in building their resilience and ability to cope with their challenges.
Additional Resources
ImpactEd – UK-based Understanding Attendance Project
ImpactEd launched Understanding Attendance as a national project to help schools understand the drivers behind poor attendance in their setting. It is based in the UK and has several reports available for review.