Before this, an unexplained absence was noticed by a form teacher, written on a register, and reached the office in a weekly return. A child could be absent for nine days before anybody telephoned a family, and in a school of sixteen hundred that happened constantly.
The change: every unexplained absence is telephoned home within the first hour of the session. Four staff do nothing else between seven and eight for the morning session, and between one and two for the afternoon. If nobody answers, a second number is tried, and where there is no answer on either the head of house is told before the end of the day.
What it found in the first year, which is why it is described here. A number of families did not know their child was not in school. Several children were missing single days repeatedly, in a pattern nobody had seen because the weekly return showed totals. Two children were being kept at home to look after younger siblings and both situations were resolved within a fortnight once anybody knew. And one child had stopped coming altogether in the second week of a term, and under the old arrangement that would not have surfaced until the return at the end of the month.
Attendance across the school rose by about three percentage points in the first year. That figure is not the reason the arrangement matters.
What it costs: four staff for one hour a day, and about eighty calls on a Sunday morning. It is the cheapest thing in this document and the school would give up almost anything else before it.
