Sheffield in ‘relegation zone’ for school attendance

The city was described as being in the relegation zone on a nationwide league table of school attendance figures at a meeting of Sheffield City Council’s education, children and families policies committee (September 28).

A report to the committee said that in 2022/23, Sheffield moved rank in 151 local authorities from 144th to 131st at primary level, and 145th to 124th at secondary level. In special schools, persistent absence has reduced by 1.4% and is now better than average.

Data for city schools shows the following for 2022/23:

• Attendance at primary schools ranges from 84% to 97.1%
• Attendance at secondary ranges from 79.4% to 96.5%
• 54 primary schools have attendance below the city average, with seven falling below 90.5%
• 13 secondary schools have attendance below the city average, with seven lower than 88%
• Two special schools have attendance below 80%.

Tim Armstrong, council head of access and inclusion, said: “School attendance in Sheffield and nationally is a challenge. Children are not going to school and we need to understand the reasons why and help support them back into education.”

Mr Armstrong said that the issue was not kids “wagging it” – playing truant – and lying to their parents about going. “That’s not the situation we face as a nation and city in terms of school attendance,” he said.

“The situation is that there are many and varied reason for children not going to school and part of our ‘Belonging’ framework is to say we want our children to like to want to go to school.”

He said that as a child the times he didn’t want to go to school were when he didn’t feel like he belonged and he did “when I felt like I was part of the crew, when I found my tribe”.

Mr Armstrong also talked about families who are struggling with money and mental health.

He told Coun Maroof Raouf he does not believe Sheffield parents think their children’s education is unimportant, there are multiple issues affecting families and all of them must be tackled.

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He said that the city School Attendance Charter launched last year involves key city organisations and his team is now asking all of them what three things they could do to help improve school attendance.

One example is working with the Children’s Hospital to minimise times when children have appointments where they have to miss a whole day of school.

He said the point of the ‘every school day matters’ campaign is to raise wider awareness and get momentum going that school attendance is important.

Committee chair Coun Dawn Dale said parents have told her there are issues around school environment, the curriculum and pressures students are under.

She added: “There’s a lot of pressure on them getting the grades and it’s far more serious than whenever I was at school – it’s all about those GCSEs and A-levels and there’s a lot of pressure on young people, particularly when they move from primary to secondary.

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“I’ve had a mum whose child went missing on Monday because he wouldn’t go and he was absolutely hysterical and it’s something that’s not comfortable for him because he’s under too much pressure.”

Coun Ian Horner said that bus cuts are causing problems. Coun Talib Hussain said the travel issue is worse for families with children in more than one school.

Coun Horner asked: “Why are we so far down the league?

“If there were two leagues there wouldn’t be any prospects of getting into the higher league for some time.”