Local Authority Attendance Officer

The Statutory Attendance & Participation Team are a strong established team with statutory responsibilities and expertise in relation to school absence and are a core part of Hertfordshire’s strategy supporting the DfE agenda in making attendance everyone’s business.

The team works with children, young people, families and schools supporting, removing barriers and ensuring access to education. We are currently recruiting for 2 positions supporting West Herts and 2 positions supporting East Herts.

The role sits within the Statutory Attendance & Participation Team which covers responsibilities for school attendance, penalty notices, children missing education, elective home education, school aged employment and children in entertainment.

• This role is here to fulfil the Local Authority’s statutory duties and responsibilities relating to school attendance.
• To represent the Local Authority in the Magistrates and Family Court including being the prosecuting officer for cases of non-school attendance and acting as Responsible Officer for children subject to Education Supervision Orders.
• To improve whole school attendance by rigorously tracking local attendance data to devise a strategic approach to attendance that prioritises the pupils, pupil cohorts and schools in local areas.
• Working in partnership with SLT and pastoral staff to plan, implement and evaluate systems, strategies, procedures, and policies to address issues identified and improve outcomes to school absence.
• To offer support, guidance, and advice to schools to reduce severe and persistent absence in accordance with Department for Education requirements by means of a programme of targeted whole school support meetings.
• To undertake statutory casework with individual pupils/families who are of an identified as persistently/severely absent and/or are at risk of becoming persistent absentees to safeguard their education. By assessing both presenting and underlying concerns, negotiating, challenging, and ensuring that a robust support plan is implemented and reviewing and evaluating progress and outcomes.
• To deliver a robust, daily advice line to all schools, working autonomously to offer advice and guidance around all areas of school attendance and other education matters.
• To ensure that there is a multi-disciplinary support for families: providing access to early help support, providing practical whole-family support where needed to tackle the causes of absenteeism and unblock the barriers to attendance.

• To keep children safe by making safeguarding referrals as appropriate and contributing to Child Protection Conferences, core groups and professionals’ meetings.
• To maintain accurate records and information (both written and electronic) in accordance with service and Data Protection requirements including school files, individual pupil files, electronic databases, court reports, Child Protection reports and attendance data collection and analysis.

You will be/have:

Essential:

• Educated to A-Level standard or equivalent
• must have successful experience of working with schools, vulnerable children, young people and families
• must have excellent verbal, written and ICT communication skills
• be able to interpret, analyse and present data
• have the ability to organise, record, evaluate, work under pressure, flexibly and prioritise workloads to required time scales
• have the ability to effectively assess, evaluate and problem solve
• be able to negotiate and agree planned case work
• be able to work independently and as part of a team
• be able to develop credibility and work effectively within schools and multi-disciplinary settings to work collaboratively in seeking solutions for service users
• have a good understanding of the factors that influence school attendance and barriers to learning
• be able to travel independently across the County

Desirable:

• have an understanding and knowledge of the law relating to education and attendance