Term 2 Attendance SIT Projects

Over the past Term, the McClelland College Attendance School Improvement Team (SIT) has re-formed and been hard at work. It was important initially that we focus on the most up-to-date data to inform our thinking. Our starting points included our school Attendance data, ‘Barriers to Attendance’ published by the Australian Education Research Organisation, and the findings after participating in the pilot of an Attendance Fidelity Tool that uses factors of AtoSS and our policies to assess our schools strengths and weaknesses in our approaches to improving attendance.

Late last term and early this term, the Attendance SIT published a Parent Attendance Awareness Campaign. This was the result of thorough research by the team in terms of factors that hinder a student’s ability to attend school which include a perception of having an advocate at school, how the school manages bullying, respects diversity, a sense of belonging to the school community and a feeling of having student voice. Our campaign had the intention of supporting families in understanding the importance of regular school attendance on future outcomes and to empower parents and carers to convey this strong messaging at home. The campaign addressed various strategies to support parents and communicated through various forms of media. A survey was then conducted to assess success and to direct future work to support parents and carers in areas that they feel require it.

But the work is far from over. Moving into Term 3, our foci are reviewing our current processes, policies and practices; reviewing how we celebrate attendance achievements; and a campaign that will speak to students directly on why attending school regularly is important. Our SIT has divided into teams to work in specific areas and we’ll feedback to each other regularly for feedback before our next initiatives are rolled out.