Texts about missed school days to parents ‘improve attendance’

TEXTING parents about the number of days of school their child has missed can lead to small improvements in attendance, a study has found.

- JASMINE NORDEN

Parents find texts highlighting the number of days missed clearer and more meaningful than texts highlighting their child's attendance in percentage terms, researchers found.

Over the course of the trial, which involved more than 100 secondary schools in England, around 36,000 parents received texts saying, for example: “Tom missed five days of school last term”, rather than their usual school communications about absence, received by a control group of around 36,000 parents.

Receiving the former texts highlighting days missed was associated with 15 extra days of attendance per 100 pupils across five half terms, or 0.21 fewer missed days of school per pupil.

Emily Yeomans, co-chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), which funded analysis of the trial along with the Youth Endowment Fund, said: “There is no doubt that the attendance crisis is one of the biggest issues currently facing schools across England.