NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION
OF SOCIAL
WORKERS IN
EDUCATION

Founded 1884

The voice of all those working to promote school attendance and social inclusion in education
The place to visit for: - Education Welfare - Education Social Work - Pupil Social Inclusion

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NASWE!

Charlie Taylor, the Government’s Expert Adviser on Behaviour, has just published his much anticipated review on ‘Improving attendance at school’. As you may already be aware, as part of the review process, NASWE national council members took part in a number of key consultation meetings with Mr Taylor, officials from the DfE, and on one occasion also directly with the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove.

In a speech given on 1 September 2011, Mr Gove had talked about the “missing million” children who are absent from school for more than three weeks a year. He also referred to the “educational underclass” of children who for various reasons sit outside of mainstream education and described how many of them have simply not spent enough time in school to achieve academic success. The Secretary of State then subsequently asked Charlie Taylor, the government’s expert adviser on behaviour, to undertake a new review into the problem of truancy and to come up with recommendations for improving the school attendance of these particularly vulnerable children. You can now download the Taylor report and the Secretary of State for Education’s response by clicking on the link below. We have also highlighted what NASWE believes to be the reports key recommendations, along with our initial brief comments:

www.education.gov.uk/schools/pupilsupport/behaviour/a00208164/taylor-review

Summary of the report’s main attendance recommendations:

• That the language of Government focuses more on improving attendance and there is less use of the word ‘truancy’
• CT has deliberately tried to avoid using the term ‘truancy’ because it has become an emotive word that's now all too often misappropriated by both politician's and news media reporters alike - instead his review talks primarily about 'improving attendance' and especially the importance of early identification & intervention with vulnerable pupils who exhibit poor attendance patterns in primary schools.
• That Minister focus on improving the attendance of vulnerable pupils in primary schools.
• The review echoes NASWE’s belief that primary schools should re-focus their efforts to intervene earlier with troubled families.
• That the Government changes the focus, when talking about attendance, away from unauthorised and authorised absence, towards making overall absence and persistent absence the headline figures to discuss publicly.
• After lobbying by NASWE the government now acknowledges that some schools have concentrated their efforts on authorising absences rather than addressing the underlying causes of children’s poor attendance. Consequently, it’s to be welcomed that the DfE will no longer be emphasising the need for schools and LA’s to tackle unauthorised absence - UA will still need to be recorded by schools for our prosecution evidence but the government's new strategy will focus on the need for schools to improve their overall attendance and PA rates.
• That changes are made to the pupil registration regulations to strengthen the rules on term time holidays. While head teachers should continue to have discretion, holidays in term time should be the exception rather than the rule.
• Contrary to last month’s malevolent leaks to the national press, holidays in term-time are not going to be banned because the government accepts that their will always be genuine individual family circumstances which warrant approval; but the review makes it clear that Headteachers will now be expected to exercise much greater discretion and to this end, the government are also going to re-draft the existing attendance regulations to remove all references which might misleadingly suggest to some people that 10 days off school should always be allowed.
• That primary schools focus on supporting parents in nursery and reception who are failing to get their children to school.
• Although Charlie Taylor has recommended that absence data should now be collected for pupils in Reception Year, the government will not be changing the statutory school age dates when parents/carers become legally responsible for ensuing their children’s attendance - this recommendation is simply to allow better data to be collected for identifying troubled families much earlier.
• That the system of fines is changed to make it simpler for schools and local authorities to use and for parents to understand. Parents who allow their child to miss too much school should receive a fine of £60. If they fail to pay within 28 days, then the fine should double to £120 and the money should be recovered directly through their child benefit. Where parents who do not receive child benefit fail to pay fines they would be recovered through the county court. In addition, the local authority should continue to have the right to take persistent offenders to court, but magistrates will be aware that a fine will have been paid for previous offences and therefore their response needs to be firm.
• Penalty Notices will be raised from £50 to £60 from 1st September 2012 as they have never increased in-line with inflation since being first introduced back in 2003 and as things currently stand, the Education PN charge is now less than the cost of the equivalent notice for dog-fouling or a parking ticket - which I think we would all agree is clearly wrong! However, NASWE believes that the Lib-Dem's in the Coalition may still oppose the recommendation to deduct the cost of any unpaid notices directly from welfare benefits and so it’s by no means certain that this will make it through to the implementation stage – even though this would potentially avoid the expensive, slow and often unsatisfactory process of having to take parents before the Magistrates Court.
• Persistent failure to send children to school is a clear sign of neglect and children’s social care services should work with schools to address underlying difficulties.
• The review supports NASWE’s position that historically Social Care professionals have all too often failed to take cases of children's poor school attendance seriously enough, even when EWOs and schools have acquired evidence to demonstrate that a pupil’s absence is symptomatic of other serious family issues that would benefit from Social Worker involvement. However, given the day-to-day reality of the impact of the government’s funding cuts on local services, NASWE suspects that any attempts to lower social work intervention thresholds in order to address attendance concerns sooner will prove too difficult to deliver, as it would almost certainly also effect existing CAF processes.
• That Academy chains, sponsors and individual schools are allowed to prosecute their pupils’ parents for poor attendance.
• This recommendation was probably to be expected, as it fits within the current government's wider agenda for the direction they want Academies to travel down. However, this could also be viewed as a fresh opportunity for LA's to trade their prosecution services to Academies or groups of Free Schools as part of a wider specialist welfare support package, as its the EWS who holds all the national expertise in this area – although there’s also a strong possibility that the government will be unable to find either the parliamentary time and/or a suitable legislative vehicle which they can use to piggy-back on necessary amendments to the primary regulations?

NASWE Conference Friday April 27th 2012 Birmingham

Joint Conference Friday April 27th 2012 Birmingham.

Family holidays in term-time to be banned!

Reports emanating from the DfE suggest that the Government is going to use Charlie Taylor's much anticipated review of school discipline & attendance to introduce a number of new proposals for tackling truancy and under-performing schools with high absence rates, and that these will include removing Headteachers' current discretionary powers to approve up to 10 days off school for family holidays in term-time.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has been alarmed at the number of lost school days which pupils miss due to Headteachers' authorising leave of absence for going on family holidays during term-time. Of the 4.5 million pupil days which are missed each school year, only illness exceeds holidays in term-time as the explanation given for children's absences - and around 75% of these are recorded as authorised. As a consequence, parents & carers will also now face much tougher legal sanctions if they continue to take their children out of school for holidays.

NASWE believes that the distinction between authorised and unauthorised absences will also be abolished by Mr Gove - something we have repeatedly lobbied for over recent years, once it became evident that many schools were inappropriately authorising pupils' absences in order to avoid confrontations with difficult parents and / or misrepresent their true performance around tackling truancy and improving attendance.

Other measures likely to be introduced will see schools with higher than average overall absence rates lose points in the Government's new league tables, and it is hoped that such schools will also be prevented from obtaining Academy status - which is again something that NASWE has strongly advocated for during recent meetings with both Charlie Taylor and Mr Gove.

It is expected that the new measures will be formally announced by early March at the latest, and officials hope they will help address some of the concerns around the under-achievement of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, as there's strong evidence to show that it's children from poorer areas who struggle the most to catch-up on missed school-work.

If you wish to know more or would like to hear directly from Charlie Taylor, the Government's Behaviour & Discipline 'Tzar' who led this important key review, then you should book your place on NASWE's annual conference training day that's being held in Birmingham on Friday 27th April - Charlie and his colleague Greg Midcalf, manager of the DfE's safeguarding & attendance team, will both be speaking at the event and answering questions from delegates. Further details can be found on the Events page of the website.

Clarification On Section 444 Prosecutions

Wendesday 7th December: NASWE has received official notification from the DfE’s School Attendance and Safety Team (part of the Behaviour & Attendance in Schools Division) that - as we always suspected - independent private providers cannot prosecute section 444 offences for schools or Academies. The DfE’s lawyers have now confirmed that only Local Authority employees can exercise this power, as statutory enforcement duties cannot be delegated by a LA to a third party or an agent, irrespective of their professional history or qualifications.

DfE Research Report: A profile of pupil absence in England

Recent research report provides a comprehensive view of the latest statistical trends and analysis on absences in the maintained education sector in England. The paper expands on the pupil absence information that’s already been published, and provides a detailed breakdown on absences by types of school and various pupil characteristics more...

New Scottish Resource - Pupil Inclusion Network - Scotland (PINS)

PINS is a new Scottish resource for employees in both the voluntary and statutory sectors more...

DfE have suddenly announced that their definition of 'persistent absence' will change...

The DfE have suddenly announced that their definition of 'persistent absence' will change with effect from 1st September, with the current 20% (of lost sessions) threshold figure reducing down to just 15% or the equivalent of 23 missed days or 46 pupil sessions, compared with the previous figures of 32 school days or 64 sessions... with the threat that Ministers will further lower the threshold next year!

The DfE's accompanying press release also stresses the importance of schools (not local authorities) undertaking earlier interventions with problematic families "who tolerate low levels of attendance" and identifies the need to challenge poor attendance in "reluctant primary schools" as being a priority.

These new thresholds will be appear in the national pupil absence statistical releases published from October 2011 onwards, and will be taken into account in Ofsted inspection judgements undertaken from January 2012.

For more information please visit the members area...

Roger Fox Obituary

We are sad to report the tragic death of Roger Fox, long time NASWE member who worked in Norfolk's education welfare service for many years before becoming the court officer with the county's children's services department.

Roger was the victim in a fatal car accident on the A067 at Stibbard, near Fakenham, on Friday 22nd July. His car was involved in a collision with three other vehicles, including a coach carrying some elderly day trippers, and he sadly died at the scene.

Those of us who were lucky enough to know Roger, who was only 56 years old, will remember him as a devoted husband, proud father and dedicated professional. A keen musician, gardener and traveller, he had only just returned from his latest trip to Italy five days before the crash. He was also a committed Christian and an important member of his local Methodist church, and his strong faith was reflected in the way he lived his life. His concerns for the welfare of children & young people were always paramount.

In his spare time, Roger was a keen gardner, enjoyed coastal walks and loved listening to classical music, but his other great love was travelling, and he and his wife, Aileen, had been to Africa, Europe and the Bahamas, but his favourite destination was Italy, and he and Aileen had only just returned from a holiday in Lake Bolsena.

Roger will be much missed by his family, friends, work colleagues and NASWE members - his frequent cries of "Hear, hear" from the back of the room during sometimes passionate debates will now be much missed by all those of us who have regularly attended NASWE annual conferences since the 1990's.

Roger' wife Aileen and his daughter Katherine can be very proud of everything that Roger achieved throughout his life.

He was dearly loved and a thoroughly decent chap whose dedication will be much missed by all. As well as being a great loss to education welfare, the world is now a much sadder place without him.

House of Commons Education Committee Report 2011: Behaviour and Discipline in Schools

The following 2 documents seek to paint a picture of the nature & level of behaviour by pupils in schools and the impact that challenging behaviour has on other pupils and teaching staff. The Education Select Committee has attempted to identify how challenging behaviour can best be addressed, with a particular focus on the roles of schools, local authorities, and parents/carers.

Crucially, their report also recognises the important role that education welfare services can play in early identification & intervention with pupils who are at risk of poor behaviour and their families, and the Committee also formal expresses its concern about the fact that many local authorities are now making significant cuts to our services in a knee-jerk response to trying to manage their current funding crisis. Indeed, the Committee goes on to recommend that the Government should ensure that despite it's preference for increased responsibility being devolved to schools, the evidence shows that responsibility for the central co-ordination of education welfare services should remain with Local Authorities if our services are to continue to function well.

Copy of the Select Committee Report Details (168Kb).

Copy of the Behaviour and Discipline in Schools House of Commons Education Committee Report Details (2Mb).

There are further background notes on the News page relating to Education Behaviour and Discipline in Schools.

Education Welfare Preventative Interventions Save Many £ Millions...

NASWE wants the coalition Government to urgently review the preventative role that Education Welfare teams play in integrated Children's Services. This review should seek to shed new light on the complexity of the education welfare officers role, and especially the services contributions to improving educational attainment, safeguarding, preventing youth offending and helping break cycles of social deprivation. NASWE also wants the new Government to establish a clear timescale for improved regulation of the Education Welfare Service, including better training standards and improved access to professional development. NASWE Members can access more information in the members area.

National disparity in the numbers of Education Welfare Officers impacts on schools

An investigation for Children & Young People Now magazine undertaken by Lauren Higgs has revealed enormous variations in local authorities education welfare staffing levels.

The figures were obtained through Freedom of Information requests, and show how specialist education disciplines like EWOs and educational psychologist have become marginalised under the Every Child Matters rush to introduce more integrated working. This follows on from a report published earlier in the year by the Children's Services Professional Network in which they warned that the government's squeeze on public sector finances was threatening the future of education welfare services.

The big concern is that more and more staff are being asked to take on "hybrid" roles that end-up diluting our expertise & undermining our professional status, and this is being further compounded by increasing numbers of specialist education professional teams becoming accountable to local authority senior managers who have no direct knowledge or understanding of the disciplines involved.

John Chowcat, General Secretary of Aspect, told C&YP Now that "These figures reflect longstanding variations between local authorities. This underlines the need for national frameworks and standards. It is a relatively small part of Children's Services, but what they do to improve attendance is a really important expertise that needs to be protected. Council's could be missing a trick. Providing young people with a postcode lottery of access to services is unacceptable."

Similarly, Malcolm Trobe, Policy Director for the Association of School and College Leaders, said "It's important to get continuity so education welfare officers know the families in the area. One education welfare officer for 5,000 youngsters is a big patch, especially if they are covering a large geographical area. It's an identified shortfall, so a reconsideration of how training is funded would not go amiss."

According to the C&YP Now figures,

Oldham Council has the worst ratio of EWO to pupils @ 1: 18,246

but the London Borough of Kensington is the best resourced local authority with an incredible 1 x EWO for every 505 pupils!

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