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Attendance workshop

Mr Alastair Gittner

(Research Lead; Sheffield Associate Research School)

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Implementation Workshop

4^th May 2023

CORE and 1^st phase

Attendance Workshop

16^th May 2023

Oracy Workshop

Early reading Workshop

✓

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https://tinyurl.com/3t6uvvur

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Our protocols

Learning with and from each other
Sharing practice, insights and experience
Be open to questioning existing practices
Being prepared to ask and answer those awkward questions!
Maximising this opportunity

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Housekeeping

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Aims for today

To learn from one another
Attendance improving as an implementation activity
A look at the research evidence
What are we doing?
What can we do / change / improve?

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On your table

Who is here?

What are you hoping to get out of today?

Are there any themes about attendance that are common?

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Practical wisdom, experience & local understanding

Data,

research & evidence

Literacy training programme

Evidence-informed school improvement

At the intersection…

Practical wisdom, experience & local understanding

Data,

research & evidence

Literacy training programme

Evidence-informed school improvement

@EducEndowFoundn

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Helps teachers and leaders make more informed decisions about what to do (and what to stop doing!).

We can characterise our efforts as making “best bets”.

Evidence

Professional expertise

Evidence- informed practice

Why use evidence?

@EducEndowFoundn

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“Evidence does not provide easy solutions, but evidence-informed improvement is a process that has integrity and holds greater promise than any alternative.”

Professor Becky Francis, EEF

Why use evidence?

@EducEndowFoundn

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Research red flags

Type of research
Context

Same jurisdiction
Same type of schools
Same situation

Global pandemic
Extended school closure
Societal changes

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Jon Yates, CEO Youth Endowment foundation

“Being away from school not only limits a child’s ability to succeed academically, but also puts them at risk of criminal exploitation or trapped in dangerous home environments. Absences from school means that children can’t receive the support they might need from their teachers or pastoral staff, which could help to keep them from harm. Simply put, to keep children safe, we need to know how best to keep them in school.”

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EEF Rapid Evidence review

Key points

1) Schools in England use a large variety of strategies to improve pupil attendance.��2) Overall, the evidence on how effective different approaches are is weak, with very few high quality studies taking place in English schools.��3) There is some evidence of promise for parental engagement approaches and responsive interventions that meet the individual needs of the pupils.

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Warning!!

Low quality evidence

High levels of potential bias
(eg self reporting of effects)

Vast majority of studies were in the US
Small scale studies or only a few studies for each strategy
Absenteeism studied was not after a pandemic!!

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Strategies studied

Studies

Mentoring
Parental engagement
Responsive targeted approaches
Teaching of social skills
Behaviour interventions
Meal Provision
Incentive and disincentives
Extracurricular activities

Evidence

Mixed, low quality studies
Slight effect, studies of variable quality
V. slight effect, studies of variable quality
V. slight effect but poor quality studies
Mixed results but some null & negative
Null or v small positive
Not enough evidence to say
Studies too varied to say

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But…….

Lack of evidence doesn’t mean for sure that they do not work.

The EEF have called for more research

Can the studies tell us about implementation?

There could well be enough evidence for some of these to be carefully implemented.

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Practical wisdom, experience & local understanding

Data,

research & evidence

Literacy training programme

Evidence-informed school improvement

At the intersection…

Practical wisdom, experience & local understanding

Data,

research & evidence

Literacy training programme

Evidence-informed school improvement

@EducEndowFoundn

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Helps teachers and leaders make more informed decisions about what to do (and what to stop doing!).

We can characterise our efforts as making “best bets”.

Evidence

Professional expertise

Evidence- informed practice

Why use evidence?

@EducEndowFoundn

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On your table

What strategies have people tried?

Are they working?

How do they know?

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Identify if attendance intervention is working: what data do you have?

Do better/reinvigorate?

Modify and improve?

Stop?

Do something else?

What are the active ingredients?

Develop a plan

Capacity

Readiness

Timing

CPD needed?

Faithful implementation

How do you know??

Collect implementation data

Plan for sustainability

CPD mechanisms

Is it working?

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On your table

What data do you have?

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How good is your data?

Page 14

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The importance of implementation…case study

‘Bellwood Academy’

Secondary school

High staff turn over and intervention overload

Identified that overall attendance figures were being skewed by a group of disaffected yr10 students

Organised a program of aspiration raising events after school with local companies and further ed?

The target students didn’t attend

Looked further at the data

Students had low reading scores

Were often in lower sets with inexperienced or non specialist teachers

Introduced a rapid reading improvement intervention

Attendance improved

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Upstream thinking

“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.”

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External school mentors and after school “aspiration” activities

Students had reading ages well below chronological age; intervention put in place

Case study: Why were Year 10 student not attending?

Small numbers of student who tended to be in lower sets, taught by non-specialists

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Take a minute (or 4)

What do you need to do

What data do you need to collect?

What are the trends

What might be the upstream causes?

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Active ingredients

Active ingredients ARE	Active ingredients ARE NOT
A list of ONLY the principles, practices and behaviours that are absolutely essential to and indicative of success	A list of things all the desirable that will happen ideally A list of activities that you will do as part of an intervention
The absolutely key features of the intervention	All the features of an intervention
Non-negotiable	Subject to change/ adaptable
Precise and focussed	Too vague or generic
Points to return to time after time when monitoring the success of implementation

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‘Active Ingredients’

Questions to ask yourself when writing active ingredients for an intervention/innovation:

If it is working well, what are the key consistent practices and behaviours I will see?

What are the core principles and strategies that will reflect its use in every instance and across the board?

Are my active ingredients centred in “what” (strategies, principles and behaviours) as opposed to “how” (e.g. activities)?

Are my active ingredients precise enough, focussed enough and easy to communicate clearly to everyone involved?

Are there any exceptions to the active ingredients I have listed? If so, are they really active ingredients?

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Writing a plan for attendance

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Active ingredients

Parents receive personalised communications on attendance

Implementation activities

Parents consulted on style and method of communication
MIS configured to generate these
Staff training
Spreadsheets to monitor effectiveness
Sampling of parents half termly? to monitor effect.

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Active ingredients

All staff use positive language around attendance

Implementation activities

Staff training

To include modelling and practice/ coaching

SLT monitoring of fidelity
Sampling of parents half termly? to monitor effect.

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Lethal mutation

What we planned for

How it turned out

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Focus on Implementation Activities-’the how’

Important that your implementation activity delivers on the active ingredients.

For example if your problem is to do with low level disruption, you might identify an active ingredient of ‘having a well-understood consequences system in school’. If your list of implementation activities (might be training, pupil assemblies, new policies) doesn’t include activity that ensures the active ingredients are in place, then its not a good plan.

Or if your problem was addressing reading outside of the classroom, you might identify an active ingredient of ‘pupils having easy access to appropriately levelled books’. You’d expect some of the implementation activity to be about ensuring there was this easy access to appropriately levelled books.

A bit later on Alastair is going to think about a particular type of implementation activity that is likely to appear in all your implementation plans – staff CPD.

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Why do schools want to engage with parents?

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�

A programme for parents was advertised by sending flyers home with children.

Letters were sent to 3,740 families…

How many signed up?

18 parents (0.5%)

Answer: this approach resulted in signing up.
Prompts: What does this illustrate?
Are letters / flyers / slips in bags an effective way of recruiting parents?
What are the likely characteristics of these 18 parents?
What can you guess about the letter?
What’s the trade-off in getting to 3,740 parents?
What is the cost of the letter? What is the cost of the programme? Some cost c.£500 per parent

Although the costs and time commitments of creating personalised communications may be higher, these are likely to be less than the costs of running a course with very low attendance or without the parents schools most want to reach. Matthey et al. (2006) in Axford et al. (2012) ‘Engaging parents in parenting programs: Lesson from research and practice’, Children and Youth Services Review.

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Parental Engagement matters!

The home learning environment is associated with children’s school performance at all ages.
What parents do with their children matters more than their income or educational qualifications.
Fostering better relationships with families is important for a wide range of school outcomes.

�

You are all here because you are interested in parental engagement guidance report, so this is perhaps preaching to the choir, but it’s worth taking a moment to think about why parental engagement does matter.
1. Lots of studies demonstrate this link for all age groups – an area of promise
2. Also potential for closing the gap – what parents do is a mediator for income and attainment
3. We focus on attainment outcomes, but there are lots of important reasons why schools want to forge closer links with parents (eg, behaviour, safe-guarding, inclusive decision-making etc). Important to consider these elements too.

Getting people to list the different reasons might be a useful exercise to actively do with schools and teachers at the start of any sessions talking about the guidance report as it provides a way to deal with- well you have to talk to parents anyway type comment.

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What parents do can overcome part of the income gap in outcomes

A positive early home learning environment includes:

Reading to child
Songs and nursery rhymes
Praise and answering questions

Regular bedtimes and mealtimes
Positive interactions
Playing with letters and numbers

Kiernan and Mensah (2011)

Table: Percentage of children achieving a ‘good level of development’ at end of Reception by parenting quality and family income. Millennium Cohort Study.

Elicit ideas about what positive HLE consists of – show 6 elements here
Introduce MCS and explain how cohort studies work
Show table:

Explain definition of poverty
Explain right hand column (income gradient in outcomes)
Explain how parenting index mediates outcomes
Flag that we’ll talk about some of the limitations of this study later

Above table demonstrates that what parents do can overcome part of the disadvantage gap in outcomes: if you look at the raw totals (column to right) there is a clear SES gradient in children’s outcomes at the end of Reception – children in persistent poverty are half as likely to reach a ‘good level of development’ on entry to Year 1. However, where parenting quality is ‘high’ – as defined by positive interactions about learning and routines – children from poorer families outperform higher income families with weaker HLE. This is an association, but it means that it’s a promising area to focus on.
Strong correlational evidence that parental involvement is associated with improved learning outcomes. A larger number of longitudinal cohort studies support this.

EPPSE: Importance of decoding and oral language (interactions, numbers of words heard at home etc.) HLE particularly important to vocabulary. Home learning environment: “Children with a strong early years HLE made greater gains over 4 years of primary school (ES 0.30).” Strong HLE can be seen at age 11, and into secondary school. See Parsons et al.
Kiernan and Mensah (2011) Impact of poverty and parenting practices on educational attainment (EYFS)
Hart and Risley (60s) has been replicated more recently. ‘Meaningful differences’: amount of talk correlated with later outcomes. As is number of interactions, and type of interactions. This is active area of research too: http://www.lucid.ac.uk/what-we-do/research/language-0-5-project/

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Working with parents to support children’s learning

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1. Critically review how you work with parents

�

There is promising evidence of association – schools should be optimistic about the potential

But…it should be cautious optimism

the evidence on effective strategies is limited
It can be hard to implement well
If not done carefully, it can be a gap-widener

We know it matters, but we know less about how to influence it

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The evidence on effective strategies is limited

“There is no good-quality evidence that parental involvement interventions result in improved educational outcomes, in most age groups and for most approaches.”

Gorard and See, 2013

Gorard’s reviews are on the more critical side – looked at around 1,000 studies, and mostly criticised the quality of the studies
Question for group: Is “no good quality evidence” the same as evidence that it’s not effective
Most reviews are more favourable than Gorard
Eg, Toolkit says ‘moderate evidence’ – weaker for older children

But it is certainly true that the evidence is weak relative to other areas in which EEF has produced guidance so far.

There is more evidence for early years and primary than for secondary. But overall the quality of evaluation in this field has been quite weak, and even better studies (next slide) show small, mixed results.

Approaches working directly with children (e.g., class-level, small group) currently have more evidence of improving attainment than approaches working through parents.

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Project	Summary	Age	Impact	Security
Parenting Academy	Classes for pupils’ parents focused on literacy and numeracy, with incentives for attendance	Key Stage 2	0 months
Texting Parents	Weekly texts sent to parents on upcoming tests, homework, & conversation prompts	Key Stage 3 and 4	+1 months
SPOKES	10 week intervention teaches parents strategies to support children struggling with reading	Year 1	+1 months
Mind the Gap	Teachers supported to involve parents, & use metacognitive strategies	Year 4	-2 months
Family Skills	10 weekly sessions for EAL families to support literacy & connection with school	Reception	0 months
FAST: Families and Schools Together	8 weekly sessions focused on improving parents’ connections with the school, plus ongoing network	Year 1	0 months

6 EEF trials published to date show small or no effects (on attainment)

1) These 6 EEF studies were published since Gorard’s review, and most are of reasonably good quality

2) Overall small / no effects (on attainment)

3) Elements of promise when you look under the surface (see below) – but is this clutching at straws?

4) Reiterate point: based on EEF evidence, if you’re struggling with literacy, PE is probably not the best place to start

Not saying: don’t do it, but be aware of the difficulty of seeing effects on attainment in short-term

Note that texting is promising because v low cost

SPOKES has promise of longer-term effects, which we’re following up on

FAST found some effects on behavioural / socio-emotional outcomes, but not attainment

Parents typically say positive things about their experiences on these programmes – they may be beneficial for improving engagement with the school

This could be a precursor for later improvements (eg, it may take more time to see effects)

But in terms of short-term attainment outcomes, the evidence is limited.

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2) Work with parents is hard to implement well

Why? What do you think the barriers are?

Barriers include: parents’ work schedule and other time commitments, lack of confidence in communicating with school, language, health problems, poor experiences of their own education, negative learner identities.

Often, only 1/3 of invited parents attend even 1 session

3) And it has the potential to widen gaps if not done carefully

Why? What are the risks?

We touched on this in the intro, but discuss: what are the barriers?

Why gap widener?

The other way of looking at this is through a management and influence lens, the longer the chain, and the more diffuse you contact and influence- the harder it is to create change. We all know it can be hard creating change when you direct manage, employ and pay people, so if you are trying to shift behaviour of more people, with less routes to influence and more barriers- it’s hardly a surprise it’s hard to do!

If done in a casual way, unlikely to be effective, and may even make gap worse.

Takes us back to purpose: why are we doing this, who are we trying to reach, who do we most want to benefit?

In parenting academy example above: Over four in ten parents (41%) invited to the incentivised and nearly three quarters (73%) of parents invited to the unincentivised group did not attend any classes. Ie, even when parents were given £30 per session, 4/10 do not attend at all.

Those that do attend may not be the ones that could benefit most
Unlike most educational interventions, those focused on parents usually have a strong element of self-selection
‘The Matthew effect’ - those already engaged take most advantage of opportunities offered by school

Stu- pick up why this shouldn’t be a surprise from Imp perspective…

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Given these limitations…

Especially important to focus on implementation, and ask:

What are our aims with parental engagement?
What are our current activities? How well are these working?
Is there anything we can stop?
Which areas have better evidence?
What would less involved parents find helpful?
How can we monitor our progress?
Consult with parents

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@EducEndowFoundn

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Potentially helpful to get people to think about what behaviour is, and what they are seeking to change in practice… some of you will have come across this before, but

To understand how to influence people’s behaviour it’s necessary to think about what behaviour is. There are a number of models to do this…

This relatively simple one draws on the work of Susan Michie and colleagues suggesting behaviour is the result of the interaction of three conditions

Take a moment to think about what these three things might be. [wait time]

in plenary ask people their views: [mouseclick]

and run through the answers :

Capability- the knowledge and skills (physical and psychological)

Motivation- the mechanisms that encourage or inhibit behaviours- this can be automatic- habitual or instinctive things or more reflective, thoughtful things like choosing to do something as its good for your career or because you think it’s the right thing for your children.

Opportunity- is there opportunity to do the behaviour both physically- time and space, but also socially- is it acceptable (or unacceptable) to do

The key thing here is that to change behaviour you have to address the right component or sets of components- often we default to training which might not be the right thing, if for example motivation is the problem. We could spend the whole day on how to use this framework as a basis to design interventions but we are just using it as a prompt to get you think a bit more about what it means to change behaviour…

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A mismatch between aspirations and reality?

What…

% of school leaders believe ‘engaging parents is the responsibility of all staff’?

80%

% of teachers who believe that parental engagement has a positive impact?

98%

% schools have a plan for how they would like staff to work with parents?

28%

% of teachers say that they have received training on parental engagement?

8%

% of schools that have measures in place for monitoring parental engagement?

24%

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Monitoring and targeting our effort

Discuss the challenges posed by exerting our efforts with parental engagement. Of course, we don’t simply ‘do nothing’, but we carefully monitor and evaluate our current work – balancing the probabilities of class level interventions with interventions that target parental engagement.

Monitor progress against your aims

Given the limitations of the current evidence base, it is especially important to monitor and regularly review progress against your aims.
At present, three-quarters (76%) of schools in England do not have measures in place for monitoring parental engagement.
Monitoring does not need to be onerous. (Reflect back to example – maybe it’s checking who are the 18 parents signing up; do you want to go ahead with programme in same form?)
It could include reviewing whether particular groups of parents find communications from school helpful, whether they attend parent meetings, or feel they have a voice in the decision-making process.

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What’s working well, and not, in your current parental engagement activity?

What could you stop?

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2. Provide practical strategies to support learning at home

�

The evidence points to three areas particularly worth focusing on:

supporting parents to have high academic expectations for their children;
developing and maintaining communication with parents about school activities and schoolwork; and
promoting the development of reading habits.

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Focus on the skills you want children to

develop at different ages – can you find simple ways

that parents can encourage these at home?

Early years: activities that develop oral language and self-regulation;

Early primary: activities that target reading (for example, letter sounds, word reading, and spellings) and numeracy (such as learning numbers or learning the count sequence);

Later primary: activities that support reading comprehension through shared book reading; and

Secondary: independent reading and strategies that support independent learning.

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3. Tailor communications

�

Area of promise:

Low cost
Relatively straight-forward to implement
Some promising evidence
Also a way of getting feedback from parents

Be positive, personalise

and link to learning

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Small changes matter

How do parents know what poor attendance is?
RCT in 203 schools shows if given more (better) information parents act differently.

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Be positive, personalise, and link to learning

Letter can be very simple (fewer than 50 words)

Promote parents’ efficacy (‘attendance is something you can help with’) rather than blaming them.

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Text-messaging is a promising approach

“parents receiving the texts were nearly three times more likely than those in the control condition to talk to their child about revising for an upcoming test.”

Text messaging is a promising approach

Weekly messages over six to eight months appear to be effective, though more frequent and shorter approaches have also had positive results, particularly in the early years.

Parents are generally accepting of texting programmes, including the content, frequency, and timing of texts. However, there is such a thing as ‘too many texts’.

It may help to first provide samples and gather feedback on what parents find helpful, and monitor perceptions carefully to avoid overloading or irritating parents with messages.

Schools could chart how many messages are already going out to parents and ensure that additional communications do not become too frequent.

There is some evidence that it is beneficial to involve other family members—not just the primary contact. Some groups may also benefit particularly; for example, one study found that text messaging had particularly positive effects on engaging fathers. This is important given that fathers often have less contact with school but play an important role in supporting their children’s learning.

When asked which two types of texts they found most useful, the overwhelming majority of parents reported that they found the texts about upcoming tests the most useful (85%) followed by texts about what was taught in school that day (42%). Most parents felt that the number of texts they received during the course of the year was about right (84%)

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What are your school’s main approaches to communicating with parents?

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Magic Breakfast

Widespread practice, little evidence, policy relevance
Free, universal breakfast offer before school
RCT in 106 schools, 8,600 pupils, Years 2 & 6

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Outcome	Effect size	Months’ progress	Security	Cost per pupil
Maths	+0.15	+2		£12
Reading	+0.10	+2		£12
Writing	+0.14	+2		£12

One study in the UK found a non-significant improvement on attendance

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‘Progressive universalism’

On targeting the Magic Breakfast offer, teachers in this trial said:

It is key to avoid any feeling among children and parents that the breakfast offer at school is ‘just for the poor families’.

Encouraging children from all backgrounds to eat breakfast is a good way of removing any stigma.

Children most likely to benefit should be sensitively targeted through personal contact with parents, sending personalised letters, and proactive efforts to get children into school on time.

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Overcomes requirement for parents to attend
Needs to be intensive and sustained
High cost – needs to be targeted
Some promising evidence, though needs more evaluation

Two EEF trials currently recruiting:

REAL programme: monthly visits focused on nursery and Reception
‘ParentChild+’ twice-weekly home visits for 2-year olds

Home visiting could be effective for younger children

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In your experience, what is effective (and not) for targeted work?

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Time to plan!

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agittner@hallamtsa.org.uk