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School attendance still below pre-Covid levels

Tuesday, 8 October 2024 17:41

By Ted Peskett - Local Democracy Reporter X @TedPeskettNews

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Council figures show that 1,000 additional days were lost due to exclusions at Vale schools compared to last year.

At a council learning and culture scrutiny committee meeting on Monday, members heard how attendance at secondary and primary schools across the county had improved over the last two years.

However, they were also told by an education official at the local authority that attendance had still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

Vale Council’s acting lead inclusion manager, Amanda Geddes, said the council was providing advice and guidance to teachers and an attendance campaign launched in May 2023 was being revised for this academic year to help schools.

A pilot project has also been taking place at two secondary schools whereby enforcement officers undertake home visits to warn families of the risk of penalties if there is continued non-attendance.

Ms Geddes said this was after all other available steps had been taken by the school and when there was a lack of engagement from parents.

Cllr Rhiannon Birch, cabinet member for education, said better understanding the lives of children was important in tackling the challenges they faced in getting to school and argued for school governors to be better equipped with knowledge around this.

Cllr Birch, who used to be a teacher in Cardiff, said: "I had a boy who came into my year 7 form and he was late consistently, so he was always in trouble and after a couple of weeks, I took him to one side and he came out with he had been washing and dressing his three small sisters and taking them to school every day because his mother was a long term patient in a mental hospital and his father was a taxi driver who worked overnight."

“This only came to light because high school started at 8:40am and primary school started at 9am, so he had never been late before, but if we hadn’t done some digging we wouldn’t have known and that was a complete barrier…”

“We were able to put things in place in order to make sure he could be that attender."

“I think it is very important that governors, who come into this with the best will in the world to help children, perhaps don’t have experience of those kinds of difficulties that children perhaps face.”

One member of the scrutiny committee, Cllr William Hennessy, asked how many fixed penalty notices were issued by the council due to attendance.

Ms Geddes said about 60 were issued last year, but added that this was significantly lower than some other local authorities in Wales. She also said there were some that had issued as many as 500.

The council’s update report on school attendance for 2023/24 showed that there was an additional 1,003.5 days lost to exclusions in comparison to last year.

There has also been an increase in permanent exclusions, according to the same report. Twelve were issued and upheld this year.

Llantwit Major School was mentioned in the report as having seen a 6.8% drop in attendance from pre-Covid figures.

Pencoedtre High School in Barry, which is currently in special measures, was also mentioned by Ms Geddes as a school which had seen low attendance levels since September.

The council officer said: “[The school] started off really well and then there was a dip.”

Ms Geddes went on to add that more than 50% of school pupils were under 90% attendance in September.

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