Improving attendance in schools

Reducing absence rates continues to be a challenge for schools post-Covid, and with the clear correlation between attendance and student outcomes, it’s top of the list for schools to overcome. What steps can you take to improve attendance in your school? The first step is understanding the trends and patterns that are occurring, and that’s where your school MIS can help.

Tell me about attendance software

Record and track attendance

Quickly and easily create statutory reporting

Clearly see key attendance trends

"The legacy of covid continues to affect children across the UK and many are experiencing challenges related to their learning and wellbeing since the pandemic."

Professor Toby Salt, former MAT leader and deputy CEO of the National College for School Leadership

“Looking at patterns of attendance is important, and we hold weekly meetings with the deputy head to review the data and see where attendance is dropping or picking up so we can address the worst cases”

Leuan Price, Director of Digital Learning, St Illtyd's Catholic High School

Recording and managing attendance

Using SIMS to record and manage attendance is simple. If you use our cloud-based product, SIMS Next Gen, you can take the register anywhere, on any device and it will instantly writeback so attendance officers and admin teams have the information they need at a glance.

View insights on attendance at pupil level, as a percentage attendance indicator so you can identify at a glance pupils with low attendance who might need more or different support.

See how easy The Radcliffe School have found using Take Register in SIMS Next Gen.

Reporting on school attendance rates

SIMS offers a wide range of attendance reporting to meet your needs, all configured to the latest statutory attendance standards.

Quickly and easily create reports including:

One-click reports for today’s register.
One-click statistical attendance dashboards providing monitoring for target and key deprivation and demographic groups, including enabling monitoring of known low attenders.
Dashboards with drill through from group to individual pupil and into a holistic pupil dashboards including timelines linking conduct levels, attendance percentages and interventions, and into more granular details on specific pupil data types such as attendance codes, specific conduct event information, assessment, SEND information and other areas of the pupil record.
Group attendance timelines, with category and value reporting of graphical, numerical, comparative and summative types.
Ability to identify pattern reports, such as day of the week, broken weeks, lesson subject, and coincident peer absence to help with improving attendance in schools.
Persistent absence and threshold level alerts to enable timely intervention by pastoral staff. Alerts for reaching attendance thresholds can be set per pupil or for the group.

Tips from teachers and school leaders on improving attendance in school

Give pupils a positive welcome when they return to school so they will feel better about returning.
Encourage pupils to see value of school by showing them how much learning they might miss.
Visit parents of pupils with low attendance and talk to them about their concerns.
Reassure pupils and parents who have health concerns that school is a safe environment.
Monitor attendance data so any changes or drops in attendance can be acted upon.

Read our 'Generation Catch-up' report to hear more about how schools are tackling the post-Covid challenges.

Download the report

Interested in learning how SIMS can help improve attendance in your school?