Ofsted has sought feedback on its revised inspection framework. In order to inform our response to the consultation, we held a series of roundtables in March, focusing on the areas of inclusion, curriculum and attendance. These roundtables are only part of the work informing our final response and are complemented by an online survey as well as reviews of existing literature and data.

Our online roundtables were attended by Chartered College Fellows and members from a range of schools and settings, representing Early Years to Initial Teacher Training, mainstream schools to specialist provision, as well as some practitioners who are also Ofsted inspectors and Fellows who are His Majesty’s Inspectors (HMIs).

Each discussion has fed into our response to the current Ofsted and Department for Education (DfE) consultations around the inspection framework and measures proposed. It should be noted that the views summarised here are those of colleagues attending the roundtables and reflect their experiences with and opinions of the inspection system. They are not necessarily representative of the entire teaching profession or the Chartered College of Teaching as an organisation but they are important to share as part of the evidence informing discussions going forward.

In a previous blog post, we shared headline findings from our consultation. In this series, we share more detailed insights on some of the focus areas, which have also been shared with Ofsted.

Our third blog focuses on attendance.

Attendance has been discussed nationally and locally as one of the biggest concerns in current schooling, with headlines almost daily about the growing number of children missing vast amounts of their schooling. The move to include attendance as a separate focus area within the framework also demonstrates that it has become a national priority. While attendees unanimously agreed about the importance of attendance for children’s learning, concerns were raised about the accountability approaches for attendance, schools being expected to do more in an already challenging sector area and the inequality of the current system.

We looked at three key areas around the attendance proposals:

• the proposed toolkit
• potential unintended consequences from the proposals
• phrasing and framing of the proposals.

What do you think of the attendance framework?

It was unanimously agreed that including this as an area was a real strength and that it raised the attendance profile in all schools. It was also acknowledged, however, that attendance is often more than a school issue and has wider societal implications for which schools cannot be held solely responsible.

Colleagues were pleased about Sir Martyn Oliver’s statement that ‘everybody will take their fair share’, and felt that this would support equality in the system. However, shortly after this statement, Lee Owston stated that Ofsted would not do ‘anything about admissions’, and colleagues shared their frustrations with this lack of equity and accountability and the missed opportunity that the framework review could have had in this area.

Within the discussion around the general scorecard approach and the implications a red grading would have for attendance, some felt that this could attract certain families who opt to take their children out of school. If they can see the school is green in most areas but that attendance is weaker, they may opt to join the school, further increasing the challenges of the school. This was discussed at a local level with some schools in authorities where large numbers of their parent population are supporting legal action over schools fining families for absence.

What do you think of the phrasing and framing of the attendance toolkit/framework?

How will it be measured?

Participants shared concerns about how judgments would be made and whether the comparison against national averages would make the process and judgment inequitable. It was suggested that some schools will always have high attendance without needing to put much effort into it, whilst others may be doing a lot of work around attendance, using resources to tackle low attendance at the expense of other areas needing that resource, with little tangible effect despite substantial effort. This disparity between those who will need to give this area a lot of time and planning versus those who will not, could impact on the time and resources available in other areas such as curriculum development or staff CPD.

Partnerships

Leaders and teachers were also glad that the wider partnerships needed in this area is acknowledged in the framework. This is an area that schools spend a lot of time developing and they were happy that this could be celebrated in the inspection. However, this also raised concerns for some special schools that rely on transportation for school and have less of an ‘at the gate’ community. They wanted reassurance on how this would be measured. The other phrase that was discussed at length was ‘leaders work with families’, as this felt very difficult to evidence. Leaders in larger schools will have specialist staff who focus on this work and who may be more successful in building relationships with families who are further removed from formal education than a school leader could. While leaders from smaller schools felt that they are often closer to their communities due to flatter hierarchies and fewer intermediaries, they also expressed concerns about being held solely accountable for partnerships, which are time-consuming to develop and sometimes out of their control despite best efforts.

School leaders shared their mixed experiences of professional support for attendance, from those with on-site attendance officers to those who no longer have any local authority personnel and are reliant on the National Point of Contact for support. This disparity of support raised questions around fairness in the inspection process.

Would schools be penalised for being inclusive and supporting all children, even when not physically in the school?

The focus on ‘keeping up and catching up’ was discussed in contradiction to the inclusion focus seen elsewhere in the framework proposals. Colleagues shared stories of children unable to attend school for various mental health reasons and for them, the importance of building a sense of belonging and safety for these students on their return to school sat in contradiction to the measures around keeping up and catching up.

There were discussions around the reduced timetable and ‘not using longer than necessary’, and who decides that as a measure. A school leader shared that children in their school had been on temporary timetables insisted on by the local authority, despite the fact that the school felt that the child was better off being in school. The school felt that this approach was taken for ‘longer than necessary’. Where would they stand in the inspector’s eyes on this and would they be held accountable for decisions not made by them?

Related to this was the discussion of children with long-term health conditions who were unable to be in the physical school but were accessing alternative provision online or with a tutor elsewhere. Schools felt that this would need to be discussed on a case-by-case basis, as the intricacies of these cases cannot be shown in the data but do ‘hurt attendance figures’.

The phrase ‘rapid and notable improvement’ was discussed and it was suggested that this could instead be ’rapid or notable improvement in their engagement with school’ in order to acknowledge that alternative approaches and not just physical presence in school needs to be understood.

What are the possible unintended consequences of the proposals?

Personal safety and workload

Participants discussed the risk that they and their staff are often faced with when carrying out home visits as part of the attendance strategy. One colleague spoke of physical attacks on their staff. There were concerns around a potential increased risk if attendance is thought about in binary terms and not in the context of the school capacity, community relationships, and ongoing plans.

The wider needs of the child are not being prioritised

Schools may prioritise having children in school when alternative longer-term strategies may be better for the child, where there are mental health implications, for example.

Schools being responsible for a wider societal problem

Schools with long-term absences that are due to societal and community relationships with education (and not the school) will have to put much-needed resources into very limited improvement. Whereas schools that have fewer long-term absences and have a community that engages with school will be able to use their resources to improve other areas.

Calls to improve the proposals around attendance:

• Ensure that schools are measured comparatively and not simply on data. Context and progress will be key. If figures are going to be used as part of the inspectorate guidance then these need to be shared with schools openly
• Clarity on what schools will be expected to do and that this is an equitable expectation for all, supported by centralised funding and if not, it is acknowledged that this will be dependent on school resources and capacity
• A focus on admissions criteria and ensuring that they are inclusive of the fact that students with SEND and those with additional needs are often absent in higher proportions
• Clarity on what ‘best possible’ and ‘high attendance’ mean, and an open metric so that schools know what they need; if this is going to be contextual, an understanding of how inspectors will make this judgment equitably across school types, settings, and contexts
• Clarity on how medical absence, children accessing alternative provision and those who have opted to flexi-school will impact the outcomes for schools.