/

Engagement strategies for teachers

Working with students, parents and the school community

Adopt an active role in fostering positive, open communication with students and parents.

  • Form healthy professional relationships with students.
  • Know at least one thing about each student’s interests out of school.
  • Talk to students.
  • Contact parents to let them know how their children are going at school (via diary entries, phone calls, email).

Share, when appropriate, relevant knowledge about students and factors which may affect their regular attendance at school:

  • Cross-reference attendance issues with learning outcomes on a regular basis.
  • Share student information with appropriate school-based personnel, for example coordinators, student welfare staff and pastoral teachers.
  • Refer to protocols to ensure a balance of access and maintenance of confidentiality.

Actively develop a safe and secure environment for all students:

  • Develop an anti-bullying campaign in the classroom. For ideas, see:
  • Encourage all students in the class to take responsibility for each other’s safety.
  • Model and develop a culture of trust.
  • Model effective timekeeping practices, for example returning work promptly, arriving and finishing classes on time.

Communicate and promote the school’s attendance expectations regarding the importance of attending school every day and arriving on time:

  • Talk to students about why it is important to be at school and discuss the school’s attendance policy.
  • Talk positively about regular attendance.

Contact parents to follow up student absence:

  • Ensure that all teachers are responsible for contact.
  • Use agreed timelines and protocols across the school and within teams for parent contact.
  • Provide for long-term absences through classroom teachers organising meaningful work as required.

Intervention for high-risk students

Individual attendance issues can be underpinned by more complex and ingrained social and emotional factors. These may be associated with other behaviours and waning attendance may be an early warning sign.

Schools are encouraged to work in partnership with community agencies to develop a case management approach.

Effective strategies are best developed from the context of a well-considered school approach.

The school plan should be based on a case-management approach which:

  • is underpinned by a student-centred program that matches a student’s needs and interests
  • provides ongoing monitoring
  • utilises programs and scaffolds of support from across the school and community
  • provides a key relationship which facilitates other supports.

Engaging the community

The community can help play a significant role in spreading the message that school attendance is compulsory and it is compulsory because it is so important. They can also play a role in raising concerns about attendance with the school where necessary.

Schools are encouraged to communicate regularly about the importance of attendance using newsletters, noticeboards, websites, Facebook pages, brochures, and public events.

Local councils, small businesses, shopping centres, railway stations, Centrelink offices and libraries are also in a position to influence the culture of the community regarding student attendance at school.

By developing community partnerships between the home, school and wider community, parents, students and the community are encouraged to focus on the importance of attending school. The main reason to create community partnerships is to help all students to succeed in school and in life.

When communities are involved, students hear a common message from home, the wider community and school about the importance of attending school.

Schools can work in partnership with the community by:

  • participating in community programs
  • using community agencies and organisations to promote the reasons why studentsshould be attending school
  • improving communication between school, home and the community
  • promoting off-campus projects
  • sharing attendance data with parents and the community.

Schools could:

  • conduct parent information sessions that provide information about the importance ofregular school attendance
  • attend kindergarten meetings to talk to parents about the importance of regular school attendance
  • approach local sporting clubs about delivering a presentation on why students need to attend school
  • approach the management of shopping centres to discuss how they can work in partnership with the school
  • together with another local school, coordinate a local network attendance campaign to complement and extend the regional campaign
  • work with local police to ensure young people who should be in school are encouraged to go to school and, where necessary directed to services to assist them to return to education.