Attendance comes from trust, not blame.

Euan
Sep 2
8 min read

Newspaper headlines about school attendance and bad behavior. Mentioned are education officials urging parental involvement. Blue geometric background.

Parents opened social feeds this weekend to a familiar back-to-school script: attendance and behaviour must improve, and “we all need to do more… this includes mums, dads and carers too.” The line came with a pledge of hubs, mentors and new guidance. The impulse to act fast is understandable. Attendance matters for learning and for belonging. The lever rarely sits in parental willpower alone. Attendance follows trust and support, especially when families are juggling housing moves, health waits, travel costs and unresolved special educational needs.

Government data shows a mixed picture. Attendance across 2024/25 edged up to about 93% by late June, with an estimated 18.3% of young people persistently absent so far that year, lower than the year before but still high by pre-pandemic standards (DfE, July 2025). Autumn-term absence data showed persistent absence around one in five young people and severe absence near 2% (DfE, May 2025). The scale demands urgency, yet the drivers sit beyond a slogan or a single letter home. This piece asks what will actually move the dial this week and this term, and where national policy should match the rhetoric.

Families will recognise the biggest pressures because they live them. Poverty rates rose again on the latest measures, with 4.5 million children in relative poverty after housing costs in 2023/24, up from 4.3 million the year before (End Child Poverty Coalition, 2025). Fewer pounds in a household budget show up as missed bus fares, unaffordable uniform replacements and children skipping breakfast. Schools can cushion some of that shock (more on that below), but the underlying income squeeze sets the conditions for sporadic absence.

Housing disruption features heavily in attendance stories. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s latest homelessness statistics record 131,140 households in temporary accommodation at 31 March 2025, including 83,150 households with children (MHCLG, 2025). Shelter’s analysis of the same quarter estimates 169,050 children living in temporary accommodation, the highest on record (MHCLG, 2025). Many families are placed far from their home school. London data shows substantial out-of-borough placements in several boroughs, creating long commutes and broken routines (Trust for London, 2024). Children who move three or more times during their school years also see disrupted GCSE paths, according to the Children’s Commissioner; over 75,000 young people had experienced that level of churn by Year 11 in recent cohorts (Children’s Commissioner, 2025). A child waking in a B&B two bus rides from school does not need a moral nudge. A travel pass, a breakfast and a named adult at the door help far more.

Transport costs and availability have become their own barrier. Local authorities remain under a statutory duty to provide home-to-school transport in specific circumstances, including distance, income and SEND (DfE, 2024). Funding pressures are biting hard. The Local Government Association reports average annual costs near £8,900 per young person for SEND transport compared with £3,100 for mainstream transport in 2025, with spending growth outpacing budgets (Local Government Association, 2025). Families re-housed far from school often fall between national schemes and local discretion. A small bursary can be the difference between a seat on a bus and another missed morning.

Mental health access is another hard edge in the attendance story. The Children’s Commissioner’s 2023/24 analysis reported average waits for treatment close to six months, with almost a third waiting over a year by the end of 2023/24 (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2025). Those waits collide with school-based anxiety and emotionally based school avoidance. Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) are expanding; DfE and NHS England say coverage could reach around six in ten young people by April 2026, with a national rollout to all young people by 2029/30 (DfE, 2025). Coverage matters, though access and capacity still vary, and teams cannot replace core CAMHS provision (TES, 2025). A child waiting months for community treatment will not be reassured by a generic “back to school” message. Same-day school-based triage, a calm re-entry plan and quick escalation routes create momentum while clinical help catches up.

Delays and placements across SEND shape attendance patterns too. The number of EHC plans rose to 638,700 by January 2025, an increase of nearly 11% in a year; only 46.4% of new plans in 2024 were issued within the 20-week statutory timeframe (DfE EES, 2025). That backlog pushes families into limbo, without the right placement or transport. Children with complex needs miss days not through choice, but because the system has not set them up to succeed. Communication and phased returns can mitigate risk, though throughput in assessment and placement is the real unlock.

Trust sits underneath all of this. Families who have repeated poor experiences with services or who feel blamed become harder to reach. The Department for Education’s attendance mentor pilots show why relationships matter, while also showing the limits of small, stand-alone schemes. Year-one evaluation found promise alongside capacity issues, uneven engagement and exit planning gaps (DfE/York Consulting, 2024). Mentoring works best as part of a wider offer: stable pastoral teams, timely SEND decisions, onsite wellbeing support, transport solutions and practical help at the door.

Plenty has been said this week about the “first week of term”. Some headlines claim that missing day one predicts a year of absence. Patterns across the opening days can indeed flag risk. The Children’s Commissioner’s 2022 analysis of three trusts found that daily attendance data at the start of term helped identify young people who later became persistently absent, supporting early help (Children’s Commissioner, 2022). FFT Education Datalab’s work also shows a correlation: young people who miss the first week are more likely to be persistently absent, though many do not become so (FFT Education Datalab, 2022). Correlation, not causation, and context matters. Young people with unstable housing, new diagnoses or transport problems cluster on those early days. A caring phone call on day one or two beats a generic attendance threat letter. Early help means practical offers and a plan.

What should change this week inside schools and trusts? Start with contact before day two, not a scripted warning but a human check-in that asks what would help tomorrow morning. Offer breakfast at the gate with no stigma, no forms. The National School Breakfast Programme continues into 2025/26 with a 75% subsidy for participating schools; many primary schools are also running free breakfast clubs as part of the government’s early adopters scheme. Coverage remains patchy and delivery is not simple, yet the direction of travel is clear (DfE, 2025). Put uniform spares, travel cards and breakfast items at reception, and task a staff member with small-grant decisions that do not need three signatures. Run same-day wellbeing triage for children flagged by tutors or parents. Use flexible, phased re-entry for those with anxiety or after long absence, with short, clear steps visible to the family. Name an attendance mentor for each high-risk child. This would be someone with permission to call, to meet at the gate, to broker adjustments and to hold the plan. Co-design that plan with parents, not for them. Signpost to housing and benefits advice with named contacts rather than a generic leaflet. These are not silver bullets; they are the reliable basics that have the potential to build trust at speed.

Local systems can back this up. Local authorities can align attendance support with housing and transport teams, creating fast lanes for families in temporary accommodation. Publish a single referral route for school-verified travel hardship and commit to 48-hour decisions during September. Health partners can place mental health practitioners in school for same-day consults during the first fortnight and provide direct booking rights into community services for young people triaged onsite. SEND teams can ring-fence case-worker time for transition-year young people, fast-track placement decisions where attendance is faltering and fund short-term transport pending appeals or moves. None of this makes headlines. All of it helps young people through the door.

National government has levers that match its words. Funding tied to wellbeing support alongside enforcement would be a better signal than fines alone. MHST expansion should prioritise areas with the highest persistent absence and the longest CAMHS waits. Transport bursaries for families re-housed far from school would cost little relative to rising SEND transport budgets and could reduce missed days quickly (Local Government Association, 2025). Rapid placement and travel support for children in temporary accommodation should sit within DLUHC’s homelessness response and be visible to schools (DLUHC, 2025; Shelter, 2025). Data can work harder, earlier, and for help rather than punishment; daily attendance feeds already exist, and multi-agency sharing can be structured with clear purposes. Parliamentary committees have asked for better data on out-of-area placements, including distance; schooling ought to be part of that return (MHCLG Committee, 2025). Policy that notices where children actually wake up will improve attendance faster than policy that repeats that parents must try harder.

A composite example shows the point. A family is moved on a Friday from east London to a hotel twenty kilometres away. The Year 8 child wants to return on Monday. Two buses leave from a stop with no shelter and arrive after form time. Uniform rules are strict and the replacement blazer is still in a storage unit. The school receptionist offers a spare shirt, a hot bagel and a temporary pass. An attendance mentor texts a safe adult to meet the child at the main gate. A travel card is authorised for a fortnight, and a short timetable runs for a week with a planned step-up. Trust grows. Attendance becomes possible again.

Families deserve honest communication about evidence and its limits. Attendance links to attainment, yet those relationships are descriptive; the act of being absent does not cause poor grades in itself. Poverty, unmet needs and mental ill-health sit behind many absence records, and those causes remain unevenly distributed. Early-term data helps target support, although not every child who misses day one is at risk. Help should follow quickly and visibly, without blame and with practical offers first. Families respond to trust, not lectures and finger-wagging.

Policy debates will keep circling behaviour and attendance. A crackdown makes for strong headlines. A breakfast, a bus pass, a timely CAMHS slot, a placement that fits and a person at the gate make for better mornings. The tone set this week matters. Parents are partners. Schools are anchors. Public services can line up behind both. Pause for reflection: what action you will take in the coming weeks to earn attendance through trust and support?