Investigating the use of Parental Responsibility Measures for school attendance and behaviour: final report
Year: 2010
Type: other
Abstract: Disengaged: There is likely to be a culture of non attendance for the pupil and within the family as a whole.Older siblings may have been poor attendees, as may parents.There are likely to be other prominent family issues evident and there is likely to be involvement from other services.The pupil is more likely to be in the older age group (Year 10/11).Waiverers: Pupils in this cohort of families have cycles of poor attendance and family engagement with attendance service officers and compliance with the measures also tends to be cyclical.Although there are attendance issues, these are generally not severe enough to prosecute.Involvement in the attendance measures will have a short-term impact, but impacts are unlikely to be sustained over the longer-term.Fearful: For this cohort of families there may be a lack of awareness about the severity of their child's non attendance prior to intervention.There is concern at both a pupil and parent level about the threat of prosecution and this faciliates a change in a pupil's attendance through involvement in the attendance measures. Recommendations R1:The DfE should ensure that Local Authorities and schools using Parenting Contracts meet all the requirements in Section 19 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, and make more accurate PRAB data returns to the Department, as currently variations exist. R2:The majority of LAs have developed networks and contacts to share practice on their use of the PRAB measures.However, more could be done in this area to provide additional opportunities for sharing practice through the use of locally developed forums or meetings focusing on the use in particular of the behaviour measures.R3: Local authorities should improve their monitoring and evaluation processes to measure the impact of the behaviour measures.Monitoring and evaluation processes, although effective in some LAs, are not consistent across all areas.Strengthening these processes will give authorities a much greater knowledge and awareness of the impact of the measures which will help strengthen their evidence based practice.R4: Local authorities and schools should consider how the behaviour measures can be used to provide early intervention to reduce the need for exclusions.Local authorities need to consider how the measures can be embedded within wider LA strategies, increasing awareness and use.Schools need to be able to see the benefits of the behaviour measures, how they are distinct or could complement existing strategies, whilst connecting their use with improved outcomes.
Authors: Kathryn Crowther, Sally Kendall
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1585807688