Posts Tagged ‘Attendance’
Addressing the school absence emergency
Addressing the school absence emergency
The launch of London's Inclusion Charter was a powerful reminder of the need to ensure children are safe and supported in school.
The charter is part of the London Violence Reduction Unit’s work to drive up attendance and tackle rising school suspensions and absenteeism. It has been built on the voice and experience of young people and teachers.
Inspirational speakers and an impressive panel made for an uplifting launch event on Tuesday. It was wonderful to be in a room full of organisations and individuals who are striving to be the change they want to see.
Stark picture
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan shared some stark data, revealing the equivalent of 1,430 children lost learning in London each day in 2021/22 due to suspension or persistent absenteeism – up 71 per cent on pre-pandemic levels in 2018/19.
Lived experience
The real-life impact of statistics like this was brought home by two brave young people who shared their own experiences of exclusion. It was heartbreaking to hear just how disempowering their school lives had been. They went unheard in education and no time was taken to understand the why behind their actions or behaviours. Both of these young people later found adults who listened to them and created support networks that allowed them to flourish and become inspirational role models themselves.
The need for action
Sadly, we know this is not how the story ends for many young people who are excluded from school, or find themselves unable to attend. Tens of thousands of children in England are now regularly missing school. The link between attendance and educational outcomes is well understood - but attainment is just one part of the story. Children who are not in education are also at increased risk of violence and exploitation and face potentially dire consequences for their futures.
Mental health challenges, the effects of trauma and adverse childhood experiences, and special educational needs are just some of the factors contributing to the attendance crisis, – all issues that have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and its lasting impacts. Traditional teaching methods are simply no longer working for our pupils.
But as we heard on Tuesday, there is something that can be done. Headteacher Sonia Potter described how nurture has transformed school life for pupils, teachers and parents at Norbury Manor Primary School in London, creating a safe and welcoming environment and fostering a culture of learning and growth.
Her story is one we hear every day from schools and teachers across the UK. We know the difference nurture provision makes.
What is nurture?
Nurture is a way of relating to children that develops their social and emotional skills and ensures they’re ready and able to learn. There are six principles of nurture, based on creating safe environments for children, understanding that all behaviour is communication and ensuring that children are understood and related to in line with their developmental stage. Nurture is a relational approach and it helps children build strong connections with teachers and peers and positive attachments to school. It helps create a sense of belonging and strong school communities - a vital part of ensuring schools are places that children want to spend time in.
As Tracey Crouch MP said on a recent visit to a nurturing school in Kent: “This is about kindness. It's about community, it's about friendship.”
What we want to see
Understanding and properly supporting children’s wellbeing plays a crucial role in improving attendance. That’s why at nurtureuk we’re calling on policymakers to make nurture the norm, and tackle the attendance crisis by supporting children to be #HappyInSchool, ready to learn and achieve their potential.
Arti Sharma, CEO, nurtureuk
Labour Party Conference – An Inclusive Approach to Tackling Exclusions and the School Absence Crisis
By Arti Sharma, CEO, nurtureuk
Nurtureuk hosted its first fringe event at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool this month and how heartening it was to be in a room full of individuals who absolutely get that ‘happy children learn better’.
The event was chaired by Anne Longfield CBE, Chair of the Commission on Young Lives, and I was joined on the panel by Lib Peck, Director of London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), and Cllr Anntoinette Bramble, Deputy Mayor of Hackney and Cabinet member for Education, Children and Young People. My fellow panellists couldn’t have been any clearer about the desperate need for an education system that truly values, respects and nurtures all our children and young people.
As Anne outlined: “An increasing number of children are falling through the gaps in education and not surprisingly it’s the most vulnerable children who are the most affected”. We now have a quarter of children – that’s one day in ten who are persistently absent from school. She also highlighted that we are seeing more and more children being suspended or excluded as they can’t cope in the classroom. Surely, this can’t be right and an accepted state of being for our children.
Lib Peck shared how she took a group of young people (part of the VRU’s Young People’s Action Group) to share their diverse views on the current and future education system and it was clear that culturally we fail to talk to young people about issues that affect them directly.
Lib said: “Children and young people can’t thrive in systems that are unadaptable or inflexible – what young people want to see is more emphasis on mental health, relationships, safe spaces and the ability to express themselves and a more rounded education system”.
The VRU team are acutely aware of the dangers of exploitation that can occur during the hours of 3-10pm when children are not in school.
Cllr Bramble represents Hackney, where nurture began over 50 years ago. As a SENCO in her previous working life, she completed nurtureuk training in the Theory and Practice of Nurture Groups. So she truly understands that “education only works if children feel loved, safe, secure and happy”. She further pointed out that “academic accolades and great results are not as impactful if we don’t have well-grounded human beings that feel confident with hope”.
As the panel highlighted, an inclusive education system is a vital part of a successful society that allows children and young people to truly flourish and ultimately results in better outcomes for us all.
I believe that nurture is the way to create that system.
Nurture is a tried and tested, proven way of relating to children – based on established principles – that builds up their self esteem, develops their social and emotional skills and ensures they are ready to learn. It centres on identifying and meeting children’s social and emotional needs. Happy children learn better. And children can’t learn effectively if they don’t have the right social and emotional skills to do so.
When schools do nurture well, and pupils’ SEMH needs are identified and addressed, the effect is transformative. Attendance improves, exclusions reduce and behaviour and attainment is better. But sadly, nurture is not yet the norm.
And it does require dedication, commitment and consistency.
We speak to teachers every day who tell us that our programmes are exactly what they’ve been looking for – and they haven’t arrived a moment too soon. I’m thinking particularly of those schools participating in our INS Programme funded by the VRU – who are really struggling in the aftermath of some horrific situations and who are desperately searching for a way to properly support their pupils and ensure that despite everything they can still get through the school gate, they can still come into the classroom, and they can keep learning.
When a school adopts nurture, this is what happens, and the school becomes a place people truly want to be – both children and teachers. I was in a school in London just recently where the headteacher spoke powerfully about how nurture had turned things around. How exclusions were lower than ever, how attendance was where it had never been before, where relationships with parents and amongst staff were blossoming.
That’s why we’re calling for teachers to be properly trained, supported and required to identify and meet children’s social and emotional needs.
As we closed our party conference session, the packed room of attendees shared our collective vision and said they felt hopeful that a future where inclusive education and nurture could be the norm was a future worth fighting for.
By Arti Sharma, CEO, nurtureuk
Reducing exclusions through a whole-school nurturing approach
We know that a nurturing approach can have an incredible effect on the lives of children and young people, and we love to hear about the real-life impact it has in the schools we work with. The following case study was from a school on our Nurturing London Violence Reduction Unit Programme which finished in 2022. The storyteller is a Senior and Safeguarding Lead of a large secondary and sixth form community school situated in North-East London.
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Before we joined the programme, nurture practice was not really recognised as a legitimate approach. Normal school processes – assessments, data, numbers, results and targets – guided teachers’ decisions more than a pupil’s wellbeing needs. We never gave the time to meaningfully ask a pupil how they were and want to know the answer. The Covid-19 pandemic helped to change this prevailing attitude as it demanded a wider societal recognition of trauma and meeting needs. All levels of society were made to reflect on what really matters to people and schools had no option but to witness the partial breakdown of society and social norms whilst we were all being affected by the pandemic.
At the start of the programme, my knowledge of nurture practice was quite good, but now it is completely embedded in my practice. All decisions affecting a young person in our school are now made with a nurture focus, and relationships with staff and the way I frame conversations with them has also changed. Since adopting a more nurturing approach I feel that I have more support from our local authority services around social, emotional and mental health and I think that since the pandemic, there is a greater recognition of these needs from other agencies too. We may have arrived at this point regardless, but the programme allowed us to embed nurture practice earlier so that we could respond to the needs created by the pandemic at an earlier stage.
The school leadership recognised that if we continued our previous approach, we would continue to see the same results, so our school completely changed our behaviour system at the start of this year, moving away from exclusions and moving towards creating a space where young people build and rebuild relationships with staff across the school. We have numerous pupils who have not been excluded because nurture has changed the way we meet their needs. Now we check-in more, make space for them to voice their needs and make more reasonable adjustments and we find that we are managing them, they are managing themselves and they are staying in mainstream education. The unseen work of the nurturing approach is reaching across the school and our pupils are aware that things have changed. They have more faith in the system in which they find themselves in, and if they have made a mistake or are in trouble for something, now they don’t question that they aren’t punished or excluded – they trust that there will be a conversation or a reflection, rather than a sanction.
The PATTERN partnership programme afforded us the opportunity to have inspiring young people come in and work with our young people. Having adults that pupils could relate to, speak to and be honest with became such an important outlet for these vulnerable young people who were on the cusp of exclusion or big educational changes. They were made to feel secure and at ease which made them want to turn up! The pupils attending were at risk of truancy, but they attended consistently each week and enjoyed the sessions. I was constantly asked each week if the sessions were taking place and what the topic of discussion might be! These pupils already have excellent English teachers, but I think they got so much more from the PATTERN sessions than they were from their English classes.
The staff training offered by the programme really resonated and has helped us to spread the message of nurture and the importance of building relationships across staff teams. The networking meetings that I attended were excellent and really valuable for my own development. The toolboxes we received were well used during lockdown and have now been embedded into the curriculum for next year.
We will continue to move the school further in the nurturing approach because of the impact of the programme. The small things we have done and changed as a result of this programme – those small things have moved mountains for our young people and for the school.
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We are delighted to have been commissioned by the London Violence Reduction Unit to deliver a new programme alongside delivery partners Tender. The Inclusive and Nurturing Schools Programme aims to tackle school exclusions across 70 schools in seven London Boroughs. For more information, please visit our website.
New figures on exclusions show the need to implement Timpson Review’s recommendations
The Timpson Review of school exclusion published in May 2019 highlighted nurture groups, saying: “they support children who have not had strong early nurturing experiences, by providing a safe and structured environment where children are encouraged to develop positive and trusting relationships with both teachers and other pupils” and that “Done well, as I have seen during this review, they can be an effective approach in reducing children’s social, emotional and behavioural difficulties while strengthening their academic performance. The Timpson Review’s Recommendation 8 called for the establishment of: “a Practice Improvement Fund of sufficient value, longevity and reach to support LAs, mainstream, special and AP schools to work together to establish effective systems to identify children in need of support and deliver good interventions for them”. One of the areas it highlighted for developing best practice is the “effective use of nurture groups and programmes”.