DfE launches daily attendance data collection trial
Schools are being asked to sign up to a daily attendance tracker trial which will collect real-time data from their registers to help to help tackle absences.
If the trial is successful, the new automated system may replace other forms of attendance data.
The trial comes as the DfE launches a new consultation on how to tackle the 'postcode lottery' of avoidable absence in schools. The consultation proposes that all schools have robust policies detailing how they will support pupils to attend as regularly as possible and sets out how legal intervention including penalty notices should be used in promoting good attendance by local authorities.
It is hoped the trial will help the government understand and manage sector-wide trends.
The trial will be run by edtech firm Wonde, which will ask for schools’ agreement to share daily pupil-level and attendance data with the DfE. It will then be automatically extracted from their management information systems, with no daily action by schools required.
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