TKAT Attendance Conferences
This year TKAT held its Attendance Conferences for the primary phase on 23rd September and the secondary phase on 1st October. Both events brought together colleagues from across the Trust to share best practice and strengthen our collective drive to improve attendance.
The message was clear: attendance is everyone’s business. Building a sense of belonging and embedding attendance in the culture of every school is key to ensuring pupils attend, achieve, and thrive.
Colleagues were introduced to CACI, a powerful new forensic tool developed by Rachel George and Fi Barton to support targeted intervention for pupils with the most complex attendance challenges. We also heard strong examples of effective practice from across the Trust, including embedding whole-school culture, celebrating attendance success, making early use of data, having effective processes relating to in-year admissions and deploying ACE teams.
A particular focus was placed on reducing Persistent Absence (PA) and Severe Absence (SA), with colleagues leaving equipped with practical strategies to take back into schools.
A special thank you to Rachel George, whose outstanding work in organising and running both conferences ensured their success.
Together, we reaffirmed our commitment: when attendance belongs to everyone, we give every pupil the best chance to succeed, in school and beyond.