Powys vows to meet school attendance targets

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporting Service

School attendance targets in Powys will be met or bettered during this academic year, a senior councillor has vowed.

At a meeting of Powys County Council's Liberal Democrat/Labour Cabinet this week, councillors received a report on the Corporate and Strategic Equality Plan Scorecard as it stood at the end of June.

This document shows how the council is performing across 122 different measures and shows whether they are: on track, off track on a quarterly basis, or will be reported on to a different time scale.

The measures are supposed to align with one of the three council objectives.

Of the 122 measures, 57 are on track, 34 are off track and one has no data.

Of the remaining 40, measures were not due to be reported on at the end of quarter one.

Education Portfolio Holder, Cllr Pete Roberts (Liberal Democrat – Llandrindod South), brought up the targets for school attendance – which are almost all off track.

Cllr Roberts said: "The measure and targets that were set are very ambitious and focussed primarily on the current academic year, but this report is on figures from the previous academic year (April to end of June)."

"What we're seeing are the historic figures before a lot of the interventions that the service had planned had actually taken place, and a number of measures are only just being missed."

Cllr Roberts continued:  "Since then we have made attendance one of our priorities.

"There have been notices sent out to parents highlighting the importance of children attending and highlighting what would not be seen as acceptable reasons for their absence."

Cllr Roberts said that "early and hopeful evidence" had come from a couple of high schools which saw an improvement for the first two weeks of the new school term which they: "need to sustain."

Cllr Roberts said: "So while all those measures are off track at this point due to position we are, the mitigations are in place, and we expect them to come either back on track or exceed the target in this academic year."

The quarter one figures for school attendance were:

11- to 16-year-olds – 87.88 per cent – the target was 89 per cent.

11- to 16-year-olds that received free school meal – 78.99 per cent – the target was 82 per cent.

11- to 16-year-olds that are in care – 84.13 per cent – target was 85 per cent.

Primary school pupils – 92.95 per cent – target was 93 per cent.

Primary school pupils that received free school meals – 87.05 per cent – target was 88 per cent.

Primary school pupils in care – 91.35 per cent – target was 89 per cent which means this measure is on track.

The council has placed improving attendance figures in its Integrated Business Plan to improve Education following a scathing report by Welsh education inspectorate Estyn.

While Estyn did not specifically mention improving attendance as part of the recommendations the council needs to implement, they said in the report on the need to improve attendance of children who receive free school meals.