The first national conference on School Attendance, organised by the National Educational Welfare Board (NEWB) - the statutory agency which encourages children to attend school on a regular basis - was held today at The Law Society, Blackhall Place, Dublin 7.

Nuala Doherty, Director of Educational Welfare Services, said that attendance is a major concern for all teachers and that student absenteeism touches every community, whether geographical or demographic, thus underlining the need to deal with it strategically and creatively.

The conference was an opportunity, she said, to take stock of international and Irish learning and practice so that work could now begin on the development of guidelines on school attendance strategies that would be practical and would work for Irish schools specifically.

She stressed the need for schools to put attendance at the centre of their focus, if guidelines were to work.

Ms Doherty explained that a school’s board of management would have to prepare a statement of strategy that outlines how the school will promote and encourage attendance and participation, in the same way that it is commonplace for schools to have bullying or admission policies.

As part of its statutory remit, the NEWB must develop and issue guidelines to support schools in this work.

“The first step to ensuring that children come to school is to ensure that they have a sense of belonging to school - that they like school and that they see its relevance to their future,” Ms Doherty said. 

“School attendance strategies must promote this sense of belonging and participation in whatever way suits the particular school and the needs of the student body.”

“There is no quick fix for improving school attendance, in the same way that there is no one reason for non-attendance itself. This places a challenge on us to grapple with the complexity of the factors associated with absenteeism. Critically, it places a challenge on us to figure out where and what interventions can be most successful in children’s lives throughout Ireland.”
 
School attendance strategies may include initiatives that ensure, for example, that the curriculum is better suited to the students, projects which may help to ensure more student input through student councils, programmes which concentrate on behaviour and classroom discipline, or plans which improve school and parent communication.