To receive a report on school attendance overview and elective home education from Alasdair Whitelaw.

Alasdair Whitelaw, Pupil Inclusion and Support Manager (AfC), gave an overview of children's attendance in the Borough’s schools and the strategic opportunities taken to ensure all children were accessing education.

Alasdair Whitelaw informed that there was new government guidance set to be published, originally in September 2023 but was pushed back due to the parliamentary process being slower than expected. In spite of this, the Borough through AfC (Achieving for Children) were using the guidance. This had meant that the Borough had to change from a fully traded offer, where schools buy back the Borough’s services from Education Welfare Officers (EWO), to being centrally funded to continue using the education welfare officers to fulfil statutory duties. The central funding had been secured.

The core offer to all 88 schools (encompassing academies, maintained, special and independent schools) would include:

·       Point of contact where EWO would be assigned with each school.

·       Attendance Lead on Senior Leadership Team (SLT).

·       Attendance Support Meeting once every full school term by each EWO.

·       Signposting for children to other services.

·       Legal Process, such as fixed penalty notices, parental contracts, education supervision orders, parenting orders and attendance prosecutions.

·       Working with other services.

·       Tailoring to the needs of school and cohort as some schools would recruit their own family support workers while others would use pastoral leads.

Alasdair Whitelaw informed that the Borough was in the process of extending the service. This involved reaching out and seeking expressions of interest for a new buyback service. With some schools expressing interest, Alasdair Whitelaw stated that a new service level agreement would need to be formulated, and that he received notifications of interest in the service offer. From there, he would recruit an additional EWO to support schools with persistent absence and severe absence. He added that schools were facing difficulties with recruitment and retention of staff to conduct home visits on why some pupils were not attending schools.

Alasdair Whitelaw also informed that there was capacity to further support schools further by recruiting an additional EWO as well as extend the work hours of currently employed part-time EWOs. There would be a specialist EWO for children with a social worker that would be able to track data across the schools, provide additional support to the social worker, and challenge schools and parents not performing their duty.

Alasdair Whitelaw also stated that the Borough was working closely working with Virtual School which had extended duties in tracking any child who had a social worker.

On Elective Home Education, Alasdair Whitelaw explained that the Borough had a dedicated Elective Home Education Coordinator. He informed that parents were not required to be on an elective home education register when home educating their children, nor did they need to comply with a home visit or speak to an elective home education coordinator if they don't want to. The Elective Home Education Coordinator, Alasdair Whitelaw stated, had built good relationships with parents whereby they would inform parents of the process, provide support, and scrutinise the education at each house.

Alasdair Whitelaw informed that home education did not need to follow the national curriculum, include any particular subjects, follow a school day or have holidays observed by schools. Nevertheless, home education must be adequate and the Local Authority had duty to investigate whether home education was adequate and challenge when needed.

Alasdair Whitelaw explained that home education was on the rise for a number of reasons. As of April 2023, 206 children were recorded as being home educated, an increase by 13 since January 2023. In response to this, the Borough was seeking to improve communication around home education, such as building relations with headteachers and work across the services in the Borough. This was caused by an initial lack of recorded data, the Covid pandemic, children’s mental health, work in a smaller environment, difficulty in accessing the school, and dissatisfaction with the school (e.g., bullying, school in general or SEND).

Councillor Knowles asked if the Borough had any provisions to support teachers with home educated student exam attendance. Alasdair Whitelaw replied that through funding SEMH (social, emotional and mental health), home educated children had their examinations within a school environment. He added that there was also encouragement to get children back into school, where appropriate.

The Chair asked if the Borough included religious grounds and dissatisfaction with the school itself as reasons for elective home education. Alasdair Whitelaw responded that there were always individual reasons with each family, such as parents being home educated themselves and continuing this practice upon their children or no vacancies at faith schools. Essentially, some reasons could be based on mindset rather than a reactive reason.

The Chair then asked whether there were trends against the school testing system. Alasdair Whitelaw responded that he believed that the education system did not fit all children where all needs could be met in the mainstream. Therefore, the Borough had been working to support schools to manage this.