Emma Sanderson, Managing Director of Momenta Connect, part of Outcomes First Group, explores how schools can get to the root of poor attendance by understanding the barriers behind absence, spotting patterns early and working in partnership with pupils and families to build better attendance habits.
The first weeks of a new school year are the moment attendance patterns are set. Get the culture right now, and schools spend the rest of the year reinforcing good habits rather than firefighting entrenched absence. Get it wrong, and small patterns of lateness or missed sessions harden into the persistent and severe absence that is so much harder to reverse.
The Department for Education’s updated statutory guidance, Working together to improve school attendance (July 2026), gives school leaders a timely prompt to revisit how they understand and respond to the reasons behind non-attendance. Its central message bears repeating at the start of term: absence is very rarely the problem itself. It is a symptom of something else going on in a student’s life, whether that’s anxiety, bullying, a health condition, caring responsibilities at home, or family circumstances that make the school gate feel like an obstacle rather than a welcome.
Culture Before Compliance
The guidance is clear that good attendance is a “learned behaviour”: patterns established early in a student’s school life, and early in each school year, tend to stick. That places real weight on the first half-term. Schools should use this period to re-communicate expectations clearly to pupils and parents, refresh the attendance policy, and make sure every member of staff, not just the attendance lead, understands that attendance is everyone’s responsibility.
A named Senior Attendance Champion on the leadership team remains central to this, but the guidance is equally clear that punitive, compliance-first responses should never be the starting point. Schools are expected to build relationships with families, listen to the barriers they describe, and work in partnership to remove them before reaching for formal or legal routes.
Spotting Patterns Early
Autumn term data is unusually valuable as it’s the first real chance to compare this year’s cohort against last year’s baseline and catch drift before it becomes habitual. The guidance asks schools to move beyond headline percentages and look at individual pupils, cohorts, and year groups, including punctuality, so that support can be targeted before absence becomes persistent (10%+) or severe (50%+).
Particular cohorts deserve early attention. Students with a social worker, young carers, those with SEND or long-term health conditions, and students from backgrounds with historically lower attendance. For many of these students, the guidance is explicit that school itself can be part of the solution, prolonged absence often deepens the underlying anxiety or disengagement it was meant to relieve.
Formal and Informal Support
Where voluntary support isn’t working, the guidance sets out a graduated escalation. Attendance contracts, education supervision orders, and only as a last resort, penalty notices or prosecution. Schools maintained by local authorities must now also avoid blanket policies on leave of absence, judging each request on its individual merits.
For leaders planning September’s attendance strategy, the underlying message is simple. Strong relationships, rigorous data, and early listening will do more for attendance this year than any single enforcement tool.
