Attendance drive 'highlights school positives'

A campaign to boost attendance in Guernsey's state schools has been launched to identify issues around what is stopping children attending school.

Figures showed attendance in secondary schools dropped by over 5% between 2021 and 2025, with a rate of 87.6% last year.

Nick Hynes, Director of Education, said tackling poor attendance was a "complicated issue".

Dr Emma Moore from the National Foundation for Educational Research said schools needed the support of "families and wider services" to tackle increasing absences.

Hynes said there could be a number of reason why children did not attend school.

"Some children don't attend because of family or friendship issues, some children, because they might have mental health and well-being issues and some children don't attend because of a variety of different things of issues that are happening in school or out of school."

Schools across the UK have been seeing higher absence rates post pandemic, something Hynes said Guernsey was not immune to.

He said the States had "looked at and taken" what other jurisdictions had done to tackle the issue.

"All of our schools from beginning of September are going to have banners outside the schools that they've helped to create, which is really highlighting the positives about attending school.

"There's great things happening in all our schools every single day, and we want all children and young people who choose to attend schools to be part of that and part of that journey."

In the UK, local authorities have the power to fine parents for unauthorised absences from school.

But Watson said her research showed that was not always the best way to encourage attendance.

"They don't address the root causes of absence," she said.

"What we found is that many families viewed that supportive relationship and communication as being much more effective than those punitive approaches.

"Particularly where absence was linked to health or well-being and ultimately our findings suggest that actually understanding and addressing the reasons behind absence is more likely to be effective than relying on sanctions alone."

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