Attendance Project

This project followed a series of discussions in the autumn of 2023 and early spring of 2024 about the development of a Sheffield Strategic Partnership. The working group determined that attendance should be the focus of strategic education partnership working in the city.

In the summer term of 2024 a working group was established and chaired by Greg Fell (Director of Public Health). Information about this work can be found using the tab below.

Learn Sheffield is leading an attendance project to build on this work in 2024/25. The ambition of this review was to identify ways in which settings are securing good attendance within the setting’s context in our local authority. We initially sampled the attendance processes of a selection of schools who are outperforming their context, in order to identify strong practice. The report was published in December 2024 and can be found below.

Attendance Report Attendance Working Group

Attendance Report – December 2024

Attendance Report In the academic year 2023-2024, Learn Sheffield supported a working group (chaired by Greg Fell – Director of Public Health in Sheffield) which was focused on attendance. Learn Sheffield committed to undertake a piece of work to look at strong practice in the city and produce a report on the learning from this to share with our partnership settings and more widely.

Using wide ranging contextual data Learn Sheffield identified a small group of schools who appeared to be outperforming their context with regards to pupils’ attendance.

At the setting visits a set of key questions about the attendance processes and practice which has enabled schools to maintain strong attendance were discussed with leaders. The learning from these conversations, with primary and secondary settings in Sheffield, has informed Good Practice in the improvement of pupils’ attendance in Sheffield Settings.