The number of children who miss more than 10% of school has nearly doubled since the pandemic, but one school in Manchester has introduced a rewards initiative that seems to be helping reduce absences
A secondary school in England has rewarded its pupils who have good attendance records with free televisions, bicycles and £100 gift vouchers.
More often than not schools are very quick to punish students with poor attendance but one school in Manchester has got a different way of reducing absences. Staff at the Co-op Academy Belle Vue, in Manchester, have nothing but praise for the rewards initiative.
Scott Fletcher, the school’s principal, introduced the scheme after he got the job in 2022, allowing children with good behaviour, character or attendance to swap merit points for tickets in regular prize draws. The more merit points a pupil has, the more tickets they can exchange for the chance to win items including designer bikes, footballs and chocolate.
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The school also runs a “golden ticket rafe” for pupils with exemplary behaviour, allowing them to cash in their clean attendance records for even bigger prizes such as £100 Tesco vouchers or JD Sports gift cards, reports The Times.
A recent “golden ticket rafe” saw more than £2,000 worth of rewards being handed out, including a 40in television for a pupil who had maintained “100 per cent attendance during the fnal week of term”. Mr Fletcher said the school once gave out 10 televisions in 10 days to reward good behaviour.
Mr Fletcher said: “Whether we like to provide or give these incentives or not, the harsh reality is that these children don’t have them and they’ve not got access to them and they’re certainly not going to have access to them throughout their childhood.
“At Belle Vue we see, year after year, that strong attendance leads to stronger outcomes. It is one of the most powerful predictors of long-term achievement, and it is something fully within our collective control.”
How are the prizes funded?
The prizes, which also include toys, stationery, football cards and tablet computers, are funded from the school’s budget.
Does it actually work?
According to Mr Fletcher, yes. He said the initiative had helped reduce the school’s persistent absence rate from 20 per cent to 10.5 per cent over the past two years. A pupil is classed as persistently absent if they miss a day of school each fortnight.
Ofsted has sounded the alarm over the rising rate of severe absence, which refers to pupils who miss more than half the school year. Around 166,000 children in England – around 2.3 per cent of all pupils – are now spending more time out of school than in the classroom, which is a worrying increase from 0.8 per cent in the year before Covid.
Sir Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s chief inspector, told The Telegraph last week: “How can that be right? If that’s not a scandal of attendance, I don’t know what is.”
The Co-op Academy Belle Vue’s low absence levels come despite nearly 58 per cent of pupils being eligible for free school meals, according to Government data – well above the national average of almost 26 per cent.
The attendance baseline improvement expectation
It comes after Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced a roadmap for every school to ramp up efforts to support pupils back to class. Now, every school will be issued with AI-powered minimum attendance improvement targets to ensure children are in school and ready to achieve.
The attendance baseline improvement expectation (ABIE) will be based on schools’ circumstances – including location, pupil needs and deprivation.
Schools will then be measured against schools of a similar demographic to them. Progress against the targets will not be used for formal accountability purposes. Ofsted does not have access to the targets, which will not be published.
But teaching unions did not welcome the plans and raised concerns about further targets putting pressure on already struggling schools.
Ms Phillipson said: “We can only deliver opportunity for children in our country if they’re in school, achieving and thriving. That’s why I want every school to play its part in getting attendance back to – and beyond – pre-pandemic levels.
“By working jointly with schools to set individual targets, we’re tackling variation head-on. Our best schools already have a brilliant approach to attendance, and now we’re driving that focus everywhere so that all children are supported to attend school and learn.”
The Mirror has contacted Co-op Academy Belle Vue for comment.
