SWABRA LLOYD FCCT, SENIOR EDUCATION LEADER, SOUTHWARK COUNCIL, UK; FORMER HEADTEACHER, FOREST ACADEMY, INSPIRE PARTNERSHIP TRUST, UK
The crisis in context
In the post-pandemic landscape, school attendance has become one of the most pressing challenges facing the education system. Absence is complex, entrenched and closely linked to wider social, emotional and systemic factors. Nationally, persistent absence remains significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels.
The Department for Education identifies attendance as central to pupils’ educational outcomes and wellbeing (DfE, 2024). However, improving attendance cannot rely solely on procedural responses or sanctions; it requires a cultural shift. ImpactEd’s (2024) analysis identifies belonging as an important predictor of attendance. This resonates with our experience at Forest Academy: attendance is connected to how children and families experience school.
The Forest Academy journey: Belonging, clarity and connection
Forest Academy is a one-form-entry primary school in Croydon, serving children from Reception to Year 6. Part of Inspire Partnership Trust, over 60 per cent of pupils are eligible for pupil premium.
Our attendance strategy began with a clear ambition: to rebuild attendance towards – and ultimately exceed – the school’s pre-pandemic level of 96.1 per cent. Following the pandemic, attendance stood at 93.9 per cent in 2022/23, rising to 94.9 per cent in 2023/24 and 94.6 per cent in 2024/25. Although overall attendance broadly reflected the national picture, attendance for disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) compared positively with national figures. We wanted to understand what was working, strengthen it and ensure that lower post-pandemic attendance did not become an accepted new normal.
From 2023/24, we began to examine not only our attendance systems but also the wider culture surrounding attendance. Attendance became an explicit whole-school leadership priority, with our approach developing around three interdependent pillars: belonging, clarity and connection.
Forest Academy was subsequently selected as a DfE Attendance Hub and now leads a DfE RISE Attendance and Behaviour Hub. We have since supported over a hundred schools nationally; however, the approach shared through the Hub developed first in response to the needs of our own school community.
Belonging
ImpactEd’s (2024) findings reflect a central principle of our approach: children are more likely to engage with school when they feel known, safe and connected.
At Forest Academy, belonging is deliberately constructed and underpinned by relentless high expectations. Every child is expected to attend, participate and succeed. As Whitaker (2021) argues, relational practice is not an addition to behaviour systems; it is the foundation.
Routine plays a critical role in this. Predictable structures create psychological safety, particularly for children with attachment needs or anxiety. Drawing on the work of Lemov et al. (2023), we view culture as something built intentionally through routines, relationships and repeated behaviours. Greeting children at the gate, consistent classroom expectations and structured transitions make attendance part of the daily culture rather than a separate intervention.
Clarity
Clarity is essential for consistency. The DfE (2024) emphasises clear expectations and consistently applied systems. At Forest Academy, this is underpinned by relentless high expectations: attendance is an essential part of every child’s entitlement to education.
We are intentional about how attendance is discussed. In many contexts, 90 per cent is considered a strong outcome; in attendance, it is not. A child at 90 per cent misses approximately 19 days of school – nearly four weeks of learning. Once this threshold is reached, recovery from persistent absence is no longer possible within that academic year. For this reason, we avoid framing attendance purely in percentages. Instead, we talk about missed learning and missed connections and, in Reception and Year 1, missed phonics.
Language is equally important. When a child returns to school following an absence, staff greet them with ‘We missed you yesterday – what happened?’ rather than ‘Where were you?’. Both seek information, but one strengthens connection. As Mccrea (2020) highlights, motivation is shaped by how messages are framed. For us, communication must be both compassionate and uncompromising.
One challenge was moving attendance from the responsibility of a small number of staff to a genuinely shared priority. Leaders modelled the language expected in conversations with families, kept attendance visible in staff briefings and considered patterns of absence alongside safeguarding and inclusion information.
Connection
While belonging describes the child’s experience of school, connection describes the relationships that we deliberately build with families.
Forest Academy adopts a whole-family approach. Drawing on the work of Rowland (2021), we combine high expectations with practical support. This can mean looking beyond the attendance figure to understand what is preventing a child from being in school. Our response has included practical help with uniform and food, breakfast provision, referrals and work with external services. These actions do not replace clear expectations; they enable families to meet them.
Our experience has been that investing in relationships gives leaders a stronger foundation from which to have difficult conversations and maintain clear expectations.
Attendance in the early years
Attendance in the early years is critical, yet often underestimated. Our ethos, Every Day Counts – Even Before Day One, reflects our commitment to attendance from the outset.
Children are not required to be in full-time education until they reach compulsory school age, and some children in Reception are not yet of compulsory school age. At Forest Academy, however, once a child takes up a Reception place, we communicate daily attendance as being essential and follow up absence with the same rigour applied across the school.
Absence in Reception means missed phonics, disrupted routines and reduced opportunities to build relationships. Our approach begins before children start school, through home visits and stay-and-play sessions, which allow us to build relationships with families and identify barriers early. As Rae (2023) highlights, early relational support is vital for children experiencing anxiety or emotionally based school avoidance.
Use of data: Precision and early intervention
At Forest Academy, data is used to anticipate risk. Tracking children whose attendance declines towards the 90 per cent threshold enables early, targeted support before patterns become entrenched.
Data is reviewed frequently and triangulated with contextual knowledge, including safeguarding insight and student voice. As Sprick and Sprick (2022) note, effective use of data supports graduated intervention, enabling schools to respond proportionately while maintaining clear expectations.
Evidence of impact: One child’s journey
The journey of one child, whom I will call Axel, illustrates how these elements can work together. Axel is one of five siblings, and his family faced multiple barriers affecting attendance, including practical hardship and wider safeguarding concerns. We worked with the family and other services, offered Axel a place at an early-morning phonics intervention with breakfast, and removed the barrier of a double drop-off by offering his sibling a free breakfast club place.
Axel developed positive relationships with adults across the school and read regularly to members of the office team. His attendance increased from 82 per cent in Reception to 97 per cent in Year 1 and remained at 97 per cent in Year 2. He also achieved 36 out of 40 in the Year 1 phonics screening check.
One case cannot demonstrate causation. It does, however, illustrate the interaction between data, practical barrier removal, sustained relationships and high expectations that characterises our approach.
Practitioner reflections
Several lessons emerge from our experience:
- Attendance is a cultural issue, and not solely a procedural one
- Language shapes understanding and behaviour
- Early identification of risk is critical
- Routine creates psychological safety
- Expectations must be consistent from the Early Years onwards
- Trust and relationships underpin sustainable improvement.
Conclusion: Attendance as a cultural barometer
Attendance is more than a measure of presence; it is an indicator of belonging, trust and inclusion. At Forest Academy, improving attendance has required a shift from monitoring absence to building belonging. Our journey is ongoing. Overall attendance has not yet returned to the 96.1 per cent achieved before the pandemic, and progress has not been linear. However, our experience has strengthened our conviction that high expectations and relational practice are not competing approaches. For us, belonging, clarity and connection provide the foundations from which ambitious expectations for attendance can be sustained.
