School Attendance and Children Missing Education Monitoring and Referral Procedure

1. Scope and application

This procedure applies to maintained and academy primary and secondary schools in England. The referral and enquiry steps apply when the relevant children-missing-education or attendance circumstances arise. Attendance-return intervals must follow the agreement with the relevant local authority.

2. Daily attendance monitoring

Monitor every pupil’s attendance daily through the attendance register.

Take proactive steps to address poor or irregular attendance and to help prevent children becoming children missing education.

3. Attendance returns and local-authority working

Refer poor attendance to the relevant local authority by an attendance return. Make attendance returns at the intervals agreed with the relevant local authority: [attendance return interval].

Where a child resides in a different local authority area from the area in which the school is located, notify and work with the child’s local authority area: [child residential local authority]. The local authorities should work together to enable effective joint working between all involved partners.

4. Failure to attend on the agreed admission date

If a pupil fails to attend on the agreed admission date, undertake reasonable enquiries to establish the child’s whereabouts.

Record the missed start date, contacts and other reasonable enquiries made, responses received, any safeguarding or attendance escalation, and the outcome.

5. Suspected children missing education referral

When enquiries lead the school to reasonably believe that a pupil will no longer attend, check whether the parent has provided written notice that the pupil will attend another school or that education otherwise than at a school will be provided.

If the school reasonably believes that the pupil will no longer attend and the required written notice has not been provided, refer the case to the child’s home local authority CME team as soon as possible. The home local authority CME team is [home local authority cme team].

If the required written notice has been provided, the referral condition in this section is not met on that basis.

6. Continuing enquiries and communication

While the referral and enquiries remain active, continue to undertake reasonable enquiries to identify the whereabouts of the child.

Maintain regular communication between the school and the local authority carrying out the enquiries until it is mutually agreed that enquiries have concluded or that there are no further actions the school can take.

7. Procedure status

Use the applicable status for a suspected children-missing-education referral: [suspected cme referral status].