Title: Attendance Officer/Cover Manager

Reports to: Assistant Headteacher

Hours: 37 hours per week. 7:30am - 3:30pm Monday to Friday (term time only)

Salary: Grade 5, points 11 - 14 (£25,979 - £27,334) FTE 0.87 equates to £22,602 - £24,327

PURPOSE

• To contribute to raising achievement by improving school attendance
• To provide a specialist service to assist the school in meeting their obligations and targets in relation to school attendance, especially persistent absence
• To promote positive attitudes by students and families towards education and to ensure that parents are made fully aware of their statutory responsibilities
• To make unsupervised contact with families, where appropriate, in their own homes and elsewhere to assess the reasons impacting on the attendance of individual students, facilitating their return or access to regular full time education provision
• To establish and develop a professional service to support the school in raising attendance, investigating persistent absences and improving punctuality. Help us diminish the gap in attendance for certain key groups such as PP students
• To support our PP students and their families in all areas, including allocating funds where needed, in liaison with the PP lead
• Ensure that all students details are accurate on our MIS and link students to classes (when there are timetable changes)
• To support the admin team and Data Manager where needed

MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• To advise the school on strategies to promote the regular and punctual attendance of all students and assist with the implementation of strategies
• Meet with school staff, students and parents to identify individual problems and strategies
• To make unsupervised contact with families in response to allocated referrals, i.e. home visits and/or meetings in school
• To establish the reason for non-attendance, make assessments and agree a plan for facilitating a return to school using appropriate strategies within specified timescales
• To understand the legislation and law relating to student attendance and initiate appropriate legal action with Educational Welfare Service (EWS) to ensure the school is carrying out its statutory responsibility in respect of students. This will include preparing statements, attending and presenting evidence or request the issuing of penalty notice fines or other legal sanctions and completion of Common Assessment Form (CAF) referrals.
• Represent Dene Magna at relevant meetings
• To understand and be knowledgeable about how Pupil Premium works within a school
• To be fully aware of and carry out all work in line with Child Protection procedures
• Ensure that data is correct and the figures given to Head of Houses and the PP lead are 100% accurate. Report any concerns, errors or issues to our Assistant Head, Pastoral and Data Manager
• Take pride in Dene Magna’s attendance figures and champion the cause of raising attendance
• Present attendance data in a meaningful way so that appropriate staff can take action
• To actively diminish the difference between PP students and their peers
• To manage staff absence and organise cover lessons utilising the bank of supply staff and teachers available on a daily basis
• To manage requests for holidays, discretionary leave and other absence from work (automated system)

Please see the attached job pack for full details