Nadia Qayyum and Anne Greaves are patrolling the streets of Bedford, hoping to solve their next case. “A car’s in the driveway, looks like someone’s home,” Nadia says as they prepare to knock on the front door and ask questions.
An anxious-looking woman answers the door. “Hello, is everything all right? Where have you been? We’ve been trying to get hold of you,” Qayyum asks in a friendly but firm tone.
It is a missing person investigation, of a certain kind. Greaves and Qayyum are part of a new breed of education welfare and attendance officers increasingly being employed by state schools across England with the urgent task of repairing the fall-off in student attendance since the Covid pandemic.
The pair work for Queen’s Park academy, a large primary school in Bedford, and are on the frontline dealing with a national issue: convincing parents that the best place for their child is in school regularly, and then investigating when that doesn’t happen.
This Tuesday the pair are visiting the home of a pupil who is absent for a second consecutive day and whose parents have not been in touch. Multiple phone calls to the parents have not been answered – and concern deepened when a call to a parent’s mobile had an international ringtone.
“First and foremost, it’s a safeguarding issue. We need to know the child is safe, wherever they are,” Greaves later explains.
This case has a happy ending: the family had been to France for a half-term holiday and only came back that morning. The mother gives a long explanation about their phones not working abroad and assures Qayyum and Greaves that her child will be in school the next morning.
The second visit is to the home of a boy after a cryptic message was sent to the school saying he was not coming in. Although it was his first day of absence, the pair are concerned, partly because the vague message appeared to come from the boy himself and offered no reason, but also because he has a poor previous record for attendance.
This time when they knock on the front door, the boy’s father answers. His son is asleep upstairs, and the pair ask if they can see him. Shortly afterwards, looking dishevelled and pale, the boy appears. “What’s the matter?” he is asked. “I woke up sick,” he replies.
After a few more questions he is told to come back to school tomorrow when he is feeling better. “Any problems, Dad, he needs to go to the doctor, and let us know,” Qayyum tells the father.
Since the pandemic, according to Qayyum and Greaves, parents seem more willing to keep children at home for minor illnesses or anxiety than before – and less willing to be strict with children who have other ideas.
The education welfare and attendance officers start their day at 8.30am, greeting children as they arrive at school and talking to parents. Then they wait for teachers to take the roll and note absences, while checking on messages from parents.
“If it’s quite vague, like ‘they are unwell’, then we follow up with a call to the parents. If it’s just a headache, we suggest they give some Calpol and then send them in. Sometimes it’s not even a headache, it’s waking up late,” said Greaves.
“Sometimes we have parents who call us and say: ‘please help, I’ve tried everything, she won’t go,’ so we go and see what we can do. That’s part of our job, helping families get over the barriers that they or their children face,” said Qayyum.
By 9.30am they have a good idea which pupils are absent, and start making phone calls to parents to check. The school’s policy is for all parents to be contacted, and for home visits to check on absences when the pupil has been off for two consecutive days without prior explanation. Children thought to be vulnerable or with a history of absence receive a visit immediately.
Since the pandemic, Queen’s Park academy has made great efforts to ensure parents and pupils know that being in the classroom is their top priority. One successful tactic has been to enlist pupils who were serial absentees as attendance monitors. The role only involves delivering messages to teachers but it seems to work. “It gives them the feeling of responsibility, and they are really proud of it,” said Qayyum.
Sometimes the school’s efforts to get daily attendance up to national pre-pandemic levels are frustrated by parents taking their children on unauthorised holidays, including some who are off for up to four weeks during term.
The school tells parents that they will be fined – up to the maximum £60 a parent, for each child – for unauthorised holidays, but the prospect of saving hundreds of pounds by travelling outside the peak holiday periods is powerful.
“We get the parents to come in, we sit them down and we say: this is not good for your children, they need to be in the classroom and learning. And we tell them that they will definitely be fined. But they have already budgeted for the fine, it makes no difference,” said Qayyum.
