Every school works hard to achieve full school attendance. When children and young people are present and attentive, they're learning and growing. But for many, school can be a challenging place, leading to disengagement and, ultimately, absence.
Emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA) and a breakdown in relationship between schools and parents and carers are growing concerns. In most schools, attendance levels have not fully recovered to the levels seen before the Covid pandemic, and persistent absence levels have risen, particularly for children and young people with special educational needs, and those who are eligible for pupil premium funding. With attendance now a key focus area in the new Ofsted framework for schools in England, there's more pressure than ever to address persistent absence and to boost attendance.
Understanding the link between nurture and attendance
Absence from school is rarely about a child simply not wanting to be there. Often, it's a symptom of underlying difficulties that a child is experiencing. Children who struggle with anxiety, trauma, unmet attachment needs, or slower social and emotional development may find the school environment overwhelming.
Nurturing approaches focus on understanding these underlying needs and providing the support necessary to address them. By building strong relationships, developing emotional literacy, and creating a sense of belonging, schools can transform a child's experience, making school a place where they want to be.
We've set out five steps to improving attendance in your school using the nurture approach.
5 steps to improving school attendance with nurture
1. Identify needs to inform interventions
Knowing your starting point is the first step to making a difference in attendance. Our unique assessment tool, the Boxall Profile® Online, can make the difference between planning interventions in the dark and seeing clearly where a child is and what will help.
- Understanding the ‘why’: The Boxall Profile® Online gives a unique insight into a child’s social, emotional, and behavioural development. It helps you pinpoint specific areas of need that might be contributing to disengagement and absence, whether it's anxiety, difficulties with peer relationships, underdeveloped coping mechanisms, or challenges with self-regulation.
- Targeted support: Once an assessment has been completed, the Boxall Profile® Online generates a comprehensive report that highlights a child's strengths and areas for development. This data is invaluable for designing individualised intervention plans. Instead of generic approaches, you can implement strategies directly addressing the root causes of their absence.
- Monitoring progress: The online platform allows for repeated assessments over time, enabling you to track the effectiveness of your interventions. Are the strategies and adaptations you're implementing making a difference? Is the child's engagement improving? This data-driven approach ensures your efforts are impactful.
Our training, e-learning and publications support your use of the Boxall Profile® Online to maximise the impact of your work.
2. Improve engagement through relational practice
Relational practice is highly effective in boosting student engagement, and can boost attendance by helping to address the underlying social and emotional needs of pupils. The September 2025 Ofsted framework says that inspectors will consider how leaders and staff support pupils with emotional, mental health or medical needs that affect attendance, so a coordinated approach to this is key.
By prioritising strong, positive relationships between pupils and staff, parents, caregivers and community, schools can create a safe and supportive environment where children feel valued, understood, and have a sense of belonging. This relational foundation helps to build trust, encouraging students to voice concerns and engage more readily with learning.
Our Relational Approach e-learning will help you and your team to get started.
3. Help children feel safe and resilience
Schools have a duty to create an environment in which pupils feel safe. While every school works hard to make sure children are safe by addressing bullying and other that make children feel unsafe, many schools will also work hard to build the social and emotional skills of your learners can help build resilience, and equip children with coping mechanisms and self-regulation skills. This will enable them to move through setbacks and be able to learn. The nurture approach can significantly reduce anxiety and disengagement, leading to improved attendance as students feel more secure and motivated to be in school.
Nurture groups are an excellent way of re-engaging learners. Our accredited Theory and Practice of Nurture Groups course is the gold-standard training for teams working in nurture groups. The training can also be applied within the classroom and to support individual learners with targeted nurturing interventions.
4. Reduce anxiety in transitions to build engagement
Our guiding nurture principles recognise the importance of transitions, big and small.
Transitions between year groups and schools can take their toll on attendance, particularly in the move from primary to secondary school. Smaller transitions can also be a source of anxiety for learners.
Our products support effective transitions, to help you ensure that your learners feel safe as they experience changes both big and small. Our Nurturing Transitions e-learning will help guide your team through using nurture to make transitions feel less daunting. If you're already using the Boxall Profile® Online, adding the Transition Passport to your subscription can make transitions smoother.
5. Go whole-school so it all works together
The Department for Education's attendance guidance (Working together to improve school attendance) highlights the importance of a whole-school approach to reduce absence.
Our whole-school nurture programme, the National Nurturing Schools Programme, gives you the tools to make changes across your school community. Schools that have completed the programme have seen positive results on attendance. For example, in a study of the Nurturing Kent programme, attendance rates for pupils with identified SEND increased by 4.6 percentage points in the first ten months of the programme.
Case study
How nurture transformed attendance in a Belfast school
Belfast Boys' Model School, a secondary school for 1,130 boys, serves a community with significant social and economic disadvantage. Over half of students are eligible for free school meals. The school has a history of high exclusion rates, low attendance, and poor student engagement.
The school joined the National Nurturing Schools Programme in 2021, and successfully achieved the award standards in 2023.
A positive impact on attendance has been noted as a consequence of adopting a nurture philosophy. Pupils with low primary school attendance have improved their attendance after being involved in the nurture programme.
There has also been an improvement in engagement with the school from parents of pupils involved in the nurture group, and overall the school has improved relationships with parents.
Overall, there has been a reduction in suspensions this academic year due to the overarching nurture approach. They are currently tracking to have fewer than 700 suspension days in this academic year - a marked improvement on previous years.
The nurturing approach has brought significant benefits to staff as well as pupils. It has helped create a more positive, understanding school culture where staff feel more equipped to manage behaviour, build relationships, and support the emotional wellbeing of students.
Starting your journey to improving attendance with nurtureuk
®Addressing school absence requires a holistic and empathetic approach. Nurtureuk provides the tools, training, and framework that can help your school create an environment where every child feels valued, understood, and eager to learn.
Ready to explore how nurtureuk can support your school in reducing absence and fostering a truly nurturing environment?