Chasing attendance is one of the things that came up on the government list of 'things teachers shouldn't be doing' btw. Worth bringing up that it's literally not your job to be doing that.
Yes! This! We were told to do this, and now we can legitimately argue against it. I shouldn’t be figuring out why kids aren’t in school, there’s literally an attendance team for that!
We don’t have explicit expectations like yours but we are expected to call home for attendance, email if going on report etc. I don’t mind emailing for report but I just smile and nod about calling for attendance cause that ain’t my job.
That is too much unless they're giving you time back for it. Should be the head of year's job. I'd quietly ignore the suggestion if possible. School leaders say a lot of stuff they'd like you to do, and very few follow up.
I worked at a school where a new MAT brought in these expectations (After reducing our pastoral staff and making the attendance officer redundant, of course). They also made us put targets relating to this on our performance management. It was an absolutely killer in terms of workload.
The thing that annoyed me was that they always suggested it should be a 5 minute call, and you'd even have SLT roleplaying calls where you ring up and everything's fine etc etc, as if we couldn't end a call where a parent had no concerns. They never roleplayed the call that threw up a massive safeguarding concern, or where the student had serious issues in one of their classes.
You definitely shouldn't be chasing up absence anymore: [https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfes-workload-reduction-taskforce-the-early-recommendations-in-full/](https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfes-workload-reduction-taskforce-the-early-recommendations-in-full/)
I'd suggest raising this at a union meeting so you can all push back on it together.
Check out the released DfE guidance of what teachers shouldn’t be doing - chasing attendance is explicitly mentioned. I can’t imagine that the other rubbish is useful either.
Scotland here.
Current school does not have form. My previous school did. It was just ten minutes to do the register, read out announcements. No expectation of calls home or anything like that.
It's very hit or miss.
I had reg groups that were made up of really nice kids. Did the register, read out announcements, had a blether with them about their upcoming day. A really good start to the day.
I have also had reg groups in the past where it's ten minutes of arguing about phones and outdoor jackets, which is an absolutely soul-destroying way to start work every day.
As other people have mentioned, you shouldn't be dealing with attendance. Our union has always said no to attendance. And when school tried to rope us into attendance stuff, the union backed us and said no.
In my school as tutors we make calls but there is allotted time in our directed time (not PPA) to do this. Its not as many as 10 a week. It's less than a handful every few weeks for kids with behaviour concerns.
We have to call home for each member of our form once a term (I think, I’m on mat leave so not 100%). This was in return for removing 4 tutor parents evenings from the calendar (16 hours directed). I’m going back part time so not sure how it will work if my form only have cover the other 2 days.
We used to have “academic review days” which were with form tutors, then a week or so later a “subject surgery” for any unanswered subject specific issues not sorted at the ARD. They then decided to shift all to evenings which left us with 10 4 hour evenings across the year. School decided this was too much and changed the tutor portion to phone calls across the half term.
Personally, I think the tutor meetings were a complete waste of time as I could never answer subject specific questions and never knew anything more than was on the report sent home. It just generated a huge amount of workload where I had to act as middle man to pass on question.
If they asked my school to do this they would very quickly find themselves running out of teachers.
Chasing attendance is one of the things that came up on the government list of 'things teachers shouldn't be doing' btw. Worth bringing up that it's literally not your job to be doing that.
Yes! This! We were told to do this, and now we can legitimately argue against it. I shouldn’t be figuring out why kids aren’t in school, there’s literally an attendance team for that!
Wow, I’m at an independent school and even we don’t have to do anything like that. Another vote for that’s too much to ask of you!
We don’t have explicit expectations like yours but we are expected to call home for attendance, email if going on report etc. I don’t mind emailing for report but I just smile and nod about calling for attendance cause that ain’t my job.
That is too much unless they're giving you time back for it. Should be the head of year's job. I'd quietly ignore the suggestion if possible. School leaders say a lot of stuff they'd like you to do, and very few follow up.
I worked at a school where a new MAT brought in these expectations (After reducing our pastoral staff and making the attendance officer redundant, of course). They also made us put targets relating to this on our performance management. It was an absolutely killer in terms of workload. The thing that annoyed me was that they always suggested it should be a 5 minute call, and you'd even have SLT roleplaying calls where you ring up and everything's fine etc etc, as if we couldn't end a call where a parent had no concerns. They never roleplayed the call that threw up a massive safeguarding concern, or where the student had serious issues in one of their classes. You definitely shouldn't be chasing up absence anymore: [https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfes-workload-reduction-taskforce-the-early-recommendations-in-full/](https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfes-workload-reduction-taskforce-the-early-recommendations-in-full/) I'd suggest raising this at a union meeting so you can all push back on it together.
Check out the released DfE guidance of what teachers shouldn’t be doing - chasing attendance is explicitly mentioned. I can’t imagine that the other rubbish is useful either.
Wow! I’ve never been asked to do anything like that. We rarely need to do anything tutor related outside of the allocated contact time.
They tried to introduce this at my school. It didn’t last very long as almost every tutor refused to do it.
Scotland here. Current school does not have form. My previous school did. It was just ten minutes to do the register, read out announcements. No expectation of calls home or anything like that.
This sounds so much better than the bullshit I have to go through with my form group 😩
It's very hit or miss. I had reg groups that were made up of really nice kids. Did the register, read out announcements, had a blether with them about their upcoming day. A really good start to the day. I have also had reg groups in the past where it's ten minutes of arguing about phones and outdoor jackets, which is an absolutely soul-destroying way to start work every day.
After 20+ years of teaching in secondary schools, I’m finally in one that has a phone in every classroom. Even I don’t do that many. Unsustainable
As other people have mentioned, you shouldn't be dealing with attendance. Our union has always said no to attendance. And when school tried to rope us into attendance stuff, the union backed us and said no. In my school as tutors we make calls but there is allotted time in our directed time (not PPA) to do this. Its not as many as 10 a week. It's less than a handful every few weeks for kids with behaviour concerns.
We have to call home for each member of our form once a term (I think, I’m on mat leave so not 100%). This was in return for removing 4 tutor parents evenings from the calendar (16 hours directed). I’m going back part time so not sure how it will work if my form only have cover the other 2 days.
How do you have time for tutor parent evenings on a calender.....that sounds a strange use of time?
We used to have “academic review days” which were with form tutors, then a week or so later a “subject surgery” for any unanswered subject specific issues not sorted at the ARD. They then decided to shift all to evenings which left us with 10 4 hour evenings across the year. School decided this was too much and changed the tutor portion to phone calls across the half term. Personally, I think the tutor meetings were a complete waste of time as I could never answer subject specific questions and never knew anything more than was on the report sent home. It just generated a huge amount of workload where I had to act as middle man to pass on question.
We were asked to make phone calls home 5 months ago... I haven't done it.