Attendance for CLA, PLAC and CWSW

EBSA

If a child is finding attending school difficult for emotional reasons, you should follow the Emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA) guidance.

Monitoring attendance of children looked after

IRIS Looked After Call

We are all aware of the importance of good school attendance for positive outcomes for all children which has been further emphasised by the recent updated DFE guidance. One of the duties of the Virtual School is to monitor attendance for our looked after children.

In line with many Virtual Schools, we commission IRIS Looked After Call to provide this service. This provides real time attendance data which is very useful. We had been using this system to collect attendance data for our children placed in other local authorities and extended it to all our looked after children in Lancashire school's last term. This also links with the update DFE guidance on attendance which requires local authorities to have access to real time data for all pupils.

The easiest and most efficient way for IRIS to collect the data is direct from your school's system such as SIMS via a data extractor. We have completed GDPR check and safeguarding processes prior to commissioning the service. The company have been providing this service since 2008 and have had no data breaches in this time.

We would be grateful for as many schools as possible to agree to this method of collecting the data as it reduces any impact on school of phone calls or emails to be dealt with. The data can also be collected by:

• Daily calls to school
• Secure email
• Directly onto the system by the school - e.g. the Designated Teacher

Designated Teachers can also be set up as a user to input the data direct, if preferred, with access only to their school's section and data. This can also be a useful tool for the DT to monitor their looked after children's attendance and identify any issues or trends. If you need any further information on this, please contact us at virtualschool@lancashire.gov.uk