Attendance & Punctuality Summary Review: 2023/2024 Strong Figures Again

ATTENDANCE 23/24: STRONG FIGURES AGAIN...BUT WE MUST BE AWARE OF ATTITUDES TO ATTENDANCE

Mr Denton

Great news is again abundant with our headline figures and overall attendance and punctuality sustaining a very strong trend since Covid-19 times. There remains much to celebrate and we are in a good place with this aspect of school life. Well done to all concerned. This means the families who demonstrate positive attendance values, the staff who are constantly on the ball and the children who are eager to attend and learn.

'Don't Miss A Minute' remains the message - loud and clear.

I spoke, in my review last year, about a gathering storm of poorer attitudes to attendance being present in an increasing minority not just at Mayfield but more noticeably nationally. There remains no doubt that attitudes to being at school have fallen over the last few years and it is becoming more and more clear that a small number of families are becoming harder to reach in terms of attendance messages. My team work hard (too hard) to get these messages across. We have a good degree of success as you can see but it is worrying that we have to spend so much time convincing a small number of families to bring their children to school.

I celebrate our continued successes but the trend is gently falling and we are having to push uphill more and more to sustain attendance. I am not sure this should have to be the case.

Here are the final headline figures for the academic year 2023/2024. It reflects the positive above national picture and comparisons once again for us all at Mayfield, but we do need to be aware of the challenges that all schools face in relation to ambivalent attitudes to school attendance and the view that it may be optional rather than statutory to attend education in the view of an increasing, but still small, minority.