At Swalcliffe Park School, we take a fresh approach to school attendance for both students and families.
Many of our students come to us having had patchy attendance or long periods out of education. This can be for a variety of reasons, including extreme anxiety, social isolation, a lack of appropriate support or exclusion.
As well as affecting academic progress, these breaks have a deep and lasting impact on the well-being of students and their families.
That’s why we agree with the Autism Education Trust, which believes that every young autistic person deserves a good education and a good quality of life.
Research also tells us that families of autistic children consistently report lower Quality of Life (QoL) than the wider population. This comes as no surprise to us, as they tell us about their struggles to secure the right support for their child, as well as wider family life issues.
So, we asked ourselves: if we focused on quality of life, would attendance follow?
Our approach
We have developed a QoL framework and approach, based on Robert Schalock’s model for QoL. It underpins everything we do and is built on four key areas for students:
- Communication
- Self-Management
- Independence
- Achievement
Through weekly keyworking and termly QoL surveys, students and families have regular, meaningful opportunities to tell us what matters to them in each of these areas, as well as their hopes and aspirations.
This is about building trust to hear student and family voices on the issues that matter to them and making school a place our students want to be.
We carried out a study with a group of students and their families, and they told us:
- Attendance matters, but only when school feels safe, inclusive and understanding.
- Keyworking makes a difference. It helps students and families feel heard and supported, laying the foundation for genuine trust.
- The children made improvements, including greater independence, happiness and personal growth.
- The parents no longer felt they had to force their child to go to school against their wishes.
How does this work?
Attendance histories are reviewed before admission to agree personalised expectations for transition into school and beyond. QoL information is linked to daily attendance data to help identify patterns and see how we can offer the most appropriate support. We take a multi-disciplinary, trauma-informed approach to finding solutions for students and families around school attendance and reasons for being in school.
Final thoughts
If we want to improve attendance across the system, maybe we need to stop asking: “Why aren’t they in school?” and start asking: “What would make school worth showing up for?”
About Swalcliffe Park School
Swalcliffe Park is a non-maintained residential and day school for autistic boys aged 10-19 years in Oxfordshire.
If you would like to know more about our study, our QoL framework and approach or about joining the QoL network, please contact Kiran Hingorani on khingorani@swalcliffepark.co.uk
We’d love to hear from you!
