Focusing on the Individual while Ignoring the Context: an Evaluation of an Attendance Project

Full text

Department of Education
Focusing on the individual while
ignoring the context:
An Evaluation of an Attendance Project
A Research Report
Patrick Easen
Jill Clark
Mary Wootten

1
© Department of Education 1997
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Department of Education
Joseph Cowen House
St. Thomas Street
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
Tel. 0191 222 5469
Fax. 0191 222 8170
ISBN 0 7017 0110 2
Permission to make copies of any part of the work should be requested in writing from:
Department of Education

2
Contents
Preface 3
Quotes about truancy 3
Executive Summary 5
Introduction to the Report 9
Section 1 The Emergence of the Attendance Project 11
Section 2 The Attendance Project in Action 20
Section 3 The Outcomes of the Attendance Project 31
Section 4 Conclusion 35
References 42
Appendix 1 The Purpose and Methodology of the Evaluation 44
List of Figures
Figure 1. The adult/child cycle of educational deprivation 12
Figure 2. A 'Nested Model' of the contexts for addressing
The problem of non-attendance 40

3
Preface
The main purpose of the research was to evaluate a local Attendance Project
during the Autumn of 1996. In order to retain a sense of anonymity for both the
project involved, and the participants, we have refrained from identifying the
project by name and have referred to it as 'The Attendance Project' throughout
this report. A local school featured in the research is referred to simply as a
'Community College'.
Quotes About Truancy
There is clear evidence to prove that we can identify children at a very
young age - perhaps as young as five or six - who are in danger of
turning to crime. The children who play truant - who don't go to
school and so get no education. ... There is clearly a need for parents,
local education authorities, the police and the local community to cut
down sharply on truancy. The truancy league tables will help act as a
spur to those schools which fail to take their responsibilities seriously.
(Speech by Rt. Hon Baroness Blatch to the Conservative Local
Government Conference Dinner on Friday 16th February, 1996).
By lifting standards and creating a space for children we will also
start to tackle truancy and exclusion. Those who truant often become
involved in crime. A Home Office survey found that 78% of males and
53% of females, who truanted at least once a week, committed offences.
(David Blunkett, 1995).
A notable feature of the 'news' about school non-attendance is for
example, the nature of the language, which evokes deep seated
concerns about order and control, proper parenting, the work ethic,
crime and much else, reinforcing the 'suspicious state of isolation' in
which the 'deviant' is viewed (Durkheim 1972).
(Carlen, Gleeson and Wardhaugh 1992, p.39).

4
… if the incidence of truancy looks set to rise, this may have more to do with
government policies (and the effect of poverty and unemployment) than with
pupils, families and schools who are currently bear the brunt of the blame.
(Gleeson, 1994, p.15).

5
Executive Summary
Summary of the full report
Background Information
• School attendance and truancy is a complex problem arising from individual
student personality, family circumstance and school environment. However,
within each of those categories there is little agreement in research studies
on which factors are crucial both to identifying and understanding the
potential or actual truant and which course of action could be taken.
(Introduction)
• The number of young people involved in the Attendance Project - eleven - is
small when set against the number of pupils at the Community College -
over 1 400 - or, indeed, the number in Year 9 alone (271). In other words, the
group involved is 0.04% of the Year group and 0.008% of the whole
Community College pupil population.
• The Attendance Project evolved from an initial plan to have a Curriculum
Development Officer as part of the Educational Achievement Strategy (EAS)
Project Team. There are differences in perception of the primary rationale of
the Project. At its simplest level of interpretation, this difference in perceived
rationales is between
* making changes which permeate the curriculum and support access
across the curriculum for traditionally disadvantaged groups; and
* focusing on the disadvantaged as individuals while leaving the
curriculum untouched. (Section 1)
• Statistics relating to school attendance provide a clear picture of the problem
faced in the West of the City. Not surprisingly there was general agreement
among all the people with whom we were able to talk during the research
that non-attendance in the local area was an important issue needing to be
addressed. (Section 2)
• The proposed referral criteria were aimed at young people who attended
school erratically rather than long-term non-attenders. This distinction,
between erratic attenders and non-attenders, appears to have been lost
during the referral process. Some of the referrals to the Project had not, in
fact, attended school at all for some time. (Section 2)

6
• Schooling patterns were very similar among the young people we
interviewed. All had attended a nursery or play school and all reported a
positive, happy experience. For the majority of the group, primary school was
also a happy time. All but one young person said they had full attendance at
primary school, enjoyed the work and liked the teachers. (Section 2)
• There were some recurrent features in the patterns of attendance which had
brought young people into the Project. Early problems with health, low
academic attainment and erratic attendance were accompanied, for some, by
bullying ending in complete non-attendance. (Section 2)
• When asked about their views of the Attendance Project as a whole, the
young people responded very positively. (Section 2)
• It would appear that the Attendance Project does cater for a group who
would benefit from some form of educational intervention beyond that
normally available in school. The young people and their families involved in
the Project seem to value the experience. (Section 2)
The Findings
• It would seem that in relation to the parents, the Attendance Project has the
following outcomes. It has:
* managed to involve at least some of the parents in what happens to
their children at the Project. Many of these are unlikely to have been
involved previously in their school life;
* helped as a catalyst for the other support agencies working with the
young people and their families; and
* provided some tangible signs of progress in the education of their
children for the parents. (Section 3)
• It would seem that in relation to the young people involved, the Attendance
Project has the following outcomes. It has:
∗ improved the school attendance of the majority of the participants,
including reintegrating several back into mainstream education;
∗ provided continued support for the young people upon their
reintegration back into education;
∗ developed the self esteem and confidence of many of the young
people; and

7
∗ contributed to a perception of improvement in the literacy of some of
the young people. (Section 3)
• The Attendance Project, therefore, would appear to have achieved some
identifiable outcomes in relation to both young people and their parents
during the time that it has been operating. (Section 3)
• The research sought to evaluate the work of the Attendance Project against its
own terms of reference. In these terms, the Project has been successful and
this success is acknowledged by the stakeholders consulted during the
evaluation. (Conclusion)
• In terms of its contribution to the success of the overall EAS Project, any
evaluation must conclude that the impact of the Attendance Project is
negligible. There appears to have been no input, for whatever reason, into the
review and development of the curriculum at the Community College nor of
its pastoral and student support systems. Given the size of the attendance
problem and the cultural and structural dimensions of schooling that
influence non-attendance this is a glaring omission. (Conclusion)
• The issue of 'value for money' is complex. It would be impossible to do a
complete cost-benefit analysis since these are always comparative. They
require the definition of alternatives to be compared and an identification of
the limits of the comparison. However, accepting these caveats, in relation to
the effective use of available funding for tackling the educational priorities of
the area and the other ways in which that funding might have been used, it
would be reasonable to conclude that the Project does not represent value for
money. (Conclusion)
Recommendations
In the light of the discussion in this report, we recommend that:
1. Any future work on non-attendance in this area addresses both the problems
of particular non-attenders and the curricular, pedagogical and pastoral issues
within the Community College which will enable returning young people to feel
more at ease in the College and more able to access the curriculum.
2. The expertise of teachers within the College and the Learning Support Service
be utilised to ensure the highest quality of support available within literacy and
numeracy provision for project participants prior to reintegration.

8
3. The facilities, including the technology, of the Access Centre at the
Community College be used actively to support the reintegration of non-
attenders.

9
4. If the Attendance Project continues, the Curriculum Development Worker
designs further developments in line with recommendations 1-3 above.
5. If the Attendance Project continues, staff at the Community College
concentrate their referrals on erratic attenders rather long-term non-attenders.
6. Serious consideration be given to preventative work in primary schools in
order to anticipate and prevent later hard-core absenteeism as this may represent
better value for money.

10
Introduction to the Report
The Department of Education at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne was
contracted to undertake an evaluation of the Attendance Project in the
Autumn of 1996. A fuller account of the purpose and methodology of the
evaluation is provided in Appendix 1, but essentially the intention was to
evaluate the work of the Attendance Project in relation to the aims and
objectives established for the Attendance Project when it was set up. The
evaluation team sought to do this by gathering accounts of those with
experience of the Project in one form or another and by analysing
documentation. Inevitably, much of what we report concerns perceptions; it
is, however, a truism that when things are perceived as real, they are real in
their consequences. The report then sets this within the wider context of the
costs of the Project and the work of the Educational Achievement Strategy
(EAS).
School attendance and truancy is a complex problem. A major recent review
of research and projects on this theme (Bell, Rosen and Dynlacht, 1994), for
example, points up the difficulties of defining causes. For not only may
truancy be regarded as tripartite in origin - arising from individual student
personality, family circumstance and school environment - but within those
categories, there is little agreement on which factors are crucial both to
identifying and understanding the potential or actual truant, and which
course of action could be taken. Elements of personality ranging from school
phobia, conduct disorder, poor academic skills and resentment of the power
relationship with staff are all considered to be contributory and, indeed,
could be seen to be mutually generating. In addition, an analysis of recent
statements by British policy-makers seems to suggest a move away in current
thinking from seeking to deal with the long-term disaffected students who
truant towards a focus on those who do turn up (at least to some extent) and
those with less intractable problems. This, however, does not mean that the
former group cease to exist, nor that their existence should not remain a
source of personal and social concern. Inevitably, decisions about whom to
target and what to do about them are related to the most effective use of
finite resources.
As evaluators we would be naive not to acknowledge the politics of the
context in which decisions about the future development of the Attendance
Project takes place. These decisions may well be interpreted in terms of such
things as the distribution of power between the various stakeholders and
various ideological stances. At the same time, the EAS Project and the Local
Education Authority (LEA) itself has to operate within legal frameworks

11
concerning school attendance. It also has a moral obligation to the
participants of its programmes and their families, at the very minimum, to
cause them no educational damage either intentionally or unintentionally,
short-term or long-term.
The number of young people involved in the Attendance Project - eleven - is
small when set against the number of pupils at the Community College - over
1,400 - or, indeed, the number in Year 9 alone (271). In other words, the group
involved is 0.04% of the Year group and 0.008% of the whole Community
College pupil population. There seems little doubt that the young people
involved are an educationally-deprived group 'at risk' in a cycle of failure.
The dilemma is how best to reconcile their short and longer term interests
with the imperatives of the wider educational system in which, eventually,
these young people will need to perform if they are to access the
opportunities in this society that are now so strongly linked to education.

12
Section 1
The emergence of the Attendance Project
In this section we set the context for the Attendance Project and describe its
emergence from a somewhat amorphous remit. We consider this to be essential
as a backcloth to the evaluation itself. We then describe the aims and objectives
of the Attendance Project before summarising the main features of the work of
the Project as we understand them from the available documentation and the
accounts provided to us.
The Context for the Attendance Project
School attendance is a matter both of national and of local concern. Within the
city there have been several initiatives seeking to address the problem. One of
these, the Raising Attendance Project, overlapped to some extent with the start
of the Educational Achievement Strategy (EAS) Project and had clear relevance
to the issues that the latter sought to address:
the EAS work links to the activities of the Attendance Project which has been
extremely helpful to many schools in terms of freeing up resources to enable
teachers to take part in attendance workshops. Although the EAS does not
provide funding for an Attendance and Punctuality Worker, it has provided
support for attendance-related work through its funding of a Transition Support
Worker and a Curriculum Development Worker (Wilkinson, 1996, P.3).
In the EAS documentation outlining the Strategy this theme is developed:
Truancy and non-attendance at school have a detrimental effect on achievement.
The Strategy aims to develop new ways to make attendance at school attractive
to young people (EAS, 1995, p.8).
The Attendance Project, then, has relevance to the work of the Educational
Achievement Strategy, funded by City Challenge, which is focused on the West
of the city. This is important for two reasons:
1. It provides a wider context for the work of the Attendance Project itself.
The EAS Project was designed to tackle a fundamental educational problem
in the West of the city, namely "the cycle of low expectation and low
achievement". It was seen as "a targeted approach to breaking into the cycle of
under achievement at points that most of the stakeholders agree are critical". The

13
cycle itself (see Figure 1.) was conceptualised as consisting of a number of
factors and was expressed diagrammatically in Project literature.
ADULT CHILD
Little contact with school
or involvement in children's
learning
Limited parenting skills
Unemployment
Low participation in
vocational training and
higher education
Poor literacy and
numeracy skills
Poor attendance and
punctuality
Behaviour problems
No commonly understood
measure of achievement
Figure 1.
The adult/child cycle of educational deprivation
The relationship of the Attendance Project to the EAS is unclear. What is
clear, however, is that the Attendance Project could have had a definite
contribution to make to the overall success of the Strategy through its focus
on a critical point in the cycle as conceptualised by those who designed the
Educational Achievement Strategy.
2. The theme of 'partnership' is a strong feature of the EAS Project. Founded
on partnership (between City Challenge and the City Education Service), the
development of partnerships at a variety of levels was seen as an important
working principle of the Strategy. It is clear, therefore, that the Attendance
Project might be expected to function in a similar way.
From Curriculum Development to Attendance
The Attendance Project evolved from an initial plan to have a Curriculum
Development Worker as part of the EAS Project Team. Originally, the EAS
Curriculum Development Worker post was seen as being:

14
… responsible for establishing initiatives which will inform the development of
the curriculum and its delivery at the Community College through contact with
the Strategy, local parents, young people and relevant agencies (from the
original remit).
By early 1996 the Curriculum Development Project Worker was expressing
concerns about "... a number of general issues ... (which) ... have had a major impact on
my work to date and have made it difficult to effectively progress this project" (Review
document). Negotiations resulted in a change of emphasis in the Project
Worker's role; in effect enabling her to develop the work in ways in which she
considered more appropriate. From this emerged the Attendance Project. It is
worth placing this change in focus within the wider context of recent
developments in the LEA.
The local LEA clearly has a problem of low levels of attendance and these are
particularly pronounced in the West of the City. Measures had been put in place
to address the problem, the most significant being the Raising Attendance
Project (RAP) and the Educational Achievement Strategy (EAS). The City
Challenge funded EAS (1993 to 1997) focused on 21 schools (4 nurseries, 16
primary and one secondary school) in the West of the City and saw attendance
as one of ten key areas contributing to raising educational attainment. The RAP,
a DfEE Truancy and Disaffected Pupils GEST Programme, ran from 1993 to 1996
with a more specific attendance brief covering much the same geographical area
and initially targeted on the three existing secondary schools.
A spin-off of the RAP was the 'Bridge Course', a full-time, off-site course aimed
at year eleven pupils who were considered at risk of dropping out of school
during their final year. The 'bridge' was seen as leading pupils from the course
into further training and a return to school was not a stated aim of the Project.
Although the RAP was not extended at the end of the GEST funding, the Bridge
course continues to operate within the LEA from a local base.
The Attendance Project has developed some of the same approaches as the
Bridge Course, which is considered successful by the LEA, but its primary aim is
to build a bridge back into the mainstream curriculum at the Community
College. It is worth charting the route by which the Project developed into this
style of off-site provision, which appears to be significantly different to the
original intentions of the strategy. In doing so, a series of fairly central questions
arise:
• What was the initial starting point of the Project?
• What was the initial rationale behind the Project?

15
• What were the processes through which the Project moved away from its
initial intentions?
• In re-casting the Project into a different mould, have the initial aims been
met or did a different set of aims take over?
• If different aims were identified, were these better in any sense than the
original ones given the nature of the underlying problem?
• Has the Project made an impact on the problems of low attendance in the
localised area?
The Attendance Project developed from those aspects of the EAS that
concentrated on the period of transition from the primary sector to the
Community College. Problems in transition had long been identified as marking
a turning point in patterns of attendance and were a specific overlapping focus
of EAS and RAP. The post of Curriculum Development Worker was originally
designated to "work with local communities and the Community College to develop
current curriculum approaches particularly around the areas of drugs, crime, training
and employment". The intention was to highlight aspects of the curriculum, both
academic and pastoral, which discouraged attendance in certain identifiable
groups.
In tracing the path by which the role of the Curriculum Development Worker
became located in a discrete project with apparently difficult relationships with
the host school and the LEA, differences in perception of the primary rationale of
the Project are brought into sharp focus. At its simplest level of interpretation,
this difference in perceived rationales is between:
• making changes which permeate the curriculum and support access
across the curriculum for traditionally disadvantaged groups; and
• focusing on the disadvantaged as individuals while leaving the
curriculum untouched.
In essence this is the picture which appears to have developed in the Attendance
Project.
It is possible to track the development of the Project through several phases. At
each stage the starting point is taken from the reports written by the Curriculum
Development Worker. These are cross referenced with the views of other key
people gathered during the evaluation.
The Project did not begin as a discrete entity with a single focus but as a three-
pronged approach to a range of what were clearly seen as the most pressing
issues concerning young people in the area and their education. The initial

16
impetus was to take the form of a curriculum initiative with a designated
worker.
The early work was to be tied to the Community College Action Plan and to be
delivered mainly through the medium of the year 10 Personal and Social
Education (P.S.E.) programme. The second prong involved the setting up of a
non-attendance pilot project which would work around the key themes selected
for the P.S.E. strand, i.e., self esteem, work and training links, social issues and
drugs education. The third prong is perhaps more accurately identified as a
strand running through the whole programme and this entailed collaborative
work towards establishing a co-ordinated drugs work strategy. The framework
supporting the initiative followed a City Challenge-style format and the
milestones for completing aspects of the work ran more or less in parallel.
A review of the Curriculum Development Project as it was then called, presented
by the Curriculum Development Worker after six months in post, revealed that,
from her point of view, all was not well. The main problems identified by the
Curriculum Development Worker at this stage revolved around:
1. A lack of collaboration between the partners stemming from different
perspectives on the direction of the work and the nature of the
appointment.
2. A perceived lack of support from the EAS management.
3. A perceived difference in the focus of the work, which the Curriculum
Development Worker identified as community based as distinct from the
predominantly school-based focus of the EAS.
4. The beginning of the work coincided with the hiatus between the college's
Ofsted inspection, the arrival of a new principal and the implementation
of a revised Action Plan.
5. Perceived problems with the status, content, resourcing and delivery of
P.S.E. in the curriculum.
6. Perceived communication problems with teachers involved in the P.S.E.
programme.
7. A slow start to the drugs education aspect of the initiative with problems
stemming from difficulties with the co-ordinating aspects of the issue.

17
The Curriculum Development Worker summarised the root cause of difficulties
at this stage as the:
large divide separating the two partners and this is largely down to differing
expectations and perspectives regarding the role of the Curriculum Development
Worker.
Her solution was to propose the development of a 'community strategy' focused
mainly on issues of non-attendance with a specific area remit and an equal
emphasis on parents. The main partners in delivering this were to be youth
workers. In effect, the Curriculum Development Worker had negotiated a re-
defined job, losing the curriculum input to the College and concentrating her
efforts on setting up an off-site, non-attendance project. This 'large divide' of
differing perceptions of the primary rationale of the post to which she had
referred, essentially an ideological divide, had assumed a physical dimension.
The LEA perspective recognised the frustrations and the conflicting expectations
between the Community College and the local Strategy that the Curriculum
Development Worker had struggled to meet. In a sense, an impasse was reached
and appears to have been resolved, mainly on the Curriculum Development
Worker's terms. The change of focus allowed the Project to build on the
transition work established by the EAS Transition Worker and the target group
of pupils shifted to nominated pupils from year 9.
The College Principal expressed considerable reservations about the change in
direction of the Project and the change in emphasis of the Curriculum
Development Worker post. What is held to have been lost is the curriculum
element linked to the needs of the Community College as identified in the post-
Ofsted Action Plan. The opportunity to contribute to the overall review and
development of the practice in the College would have impacted all pupils. The
targeting of a small number of pupils with severe attendance problems is seen, at
best, as peripheral and, at worst, as indirectly contributing to deteriorating
relationships with the Area Strategy. While accepting the Curriculum
Development Worker's dedication to local issues and the positive response of
local residents to her 'social worker' role, there is some anger at what is seen as a
seizure of the agenda. Where there is a more positive response to the Project, for
example from the Head of Year 9 within the college and the Education Welfare
Officer (EWO), this is couched in specific terms which acknowledge success with
individual pupils in terms of improved attitude and a degree of re-integration
into school. There is agreement, however, that there are issues to do with target
group selection including the geographical limit set, base location and
curriculum content which need to be resolved.

18
The Aims and Objectives of the Attendance Project
The proposal for the Attendance Project (in the March 1996 Report of the Project
Worker) described the Project as responding to the issues of non-attendance by
working on a multi-agency basis with relevant agencies. In particular, it
envisaged targeting:
• Young people who do not attend school and live in the local area;
• Parents who have concerns regarding their children’s education and
future progression routes.
Although the proposal for the Project appears to have been slightly modified
since that time, essentially the Attendance project aimed to re-integrate, where
possible, young people who live in the area back into mainstream education. The
October/November report of the Project Worker elaborated this by stating that
"Project objectives include:
• improving school attendance;
• developing student self esteem/confidence;
• developing knowledge, skills and understanding needed to make
informed choice;
• co-ordination/provision of services and resources for individual students;
• provision of an appropriate curriculum;
• continued support for young people upon their reintegration back into
education;
• developing links and providing support for parents/guardians".
These are a clear statement of the criteria by which the work of the Project might
be judged.
The Main Features of the Work of the Project
The Project is physically based in a Support Centre building; a facility available
to the local community and involved in a number of locally-based projects. The
young people who attend are referred to the Project by staff at the Community
College. The Project Worker makes contact with these young people and their
families through home visits where action plans are discussed. There appears to
be no pressure on the young people to agree to attend the Project. Once involved
in the Project there are a number of features of the work that affects them:

19
1. Group Sessions
. There are two group sessions a week. The main focus of
these sessions is to:
• develop confidence and self esteem;
• provide opportunities to develop transferable skills.
The October/November Report of the Project Worker describes the format of
these sessions thus:
Each session usually begins with group members recording their attendance at
school and at the project and is an opportunity to discuss how each student is
coping in and out of school. This is usually followed by playing several social skill
games to relax and establish a working atmosphere (with) ... the work
concentrated on a range of social/life skill exercises using a wide range of
resources. ... The use of games, discussion and role-play were also used to
stimulate and deepen issues being explored.
An outdoor activities programme was also developed. The activities
included:
• problem solving activities
• team building activities
• climbing
• raft building
• camping (with night games)
• waterfall jumping
• orienteering
• caving
• archery
There was also a video project.
2. Individual Sessions.
These sessions enable counselling and help with the
negotiation of individual action plans for monitoring progress and setting
achievable targets. Although there have been several planned sessions, these
consist mostly of informal talks usually at the beginning and end of sessions,
during home visits or at other times when the opportunity presents.
3. Literacy Sessions.
Some of the young people who do not attend school at
all receive individual literacy sessions at the Support Centre. This has also
included appropriate life skill teaching to encourage transferable skills that
will be relevant beyond school.

20
4. Home Visits.
Maintaining contact with the families of the young people
involved with the Project has been an important feature of the work as a
means of developing understandings and of planning strategies for the
future.
A project such as the Attendance Project does not exist in abstract but has to exist
and develop in relation to a pre-existing context. To some extent the former will
be shaped by the latter and is impossible to fully understand without some
knowledge of the wider picture. This section has sought to portray that wider
picture. In the next section we discuss the operation of the Attendance Project.

21
Section 2
The Attendance Project in action
In this section we report and discuss how the Attendance Project operates. We
do this in relation to the most significant features of the Project as we see them,
using the accounts provided by those concerned with the Project. These features
are the nature and scale of the problem of non-attendance, the target groups and
the criteria for referral, the young people and their families and the Project
programme. Each section describes, interprets and, where possible, explains
issues that have emerged from the study.
The Nature and Scale of the Problem of non-attendance
Statistics relating to school attendance provide a clear picture of the problem
faced in the West of the City. The City itself has one of the worst attendance
records in the country (6th from the bottom of the Secondary Schools league in
1995-6). Furthermore, the problem appears to be worsening slightly in that,
whilst the overall attendance figure for the LEA remained the same for both
1994-5 and 1995-6 at 86.6%, the unauthorised absences increased from 1.9% to
2.0%. This compares with a national picture of a 90.6% attendance rate and
unauthorised absences running at 1.0% for 1995-6.
Although the Community College does not have the worst attendance figures in
the City, at 73.1% it has the second worst, with unauthorised absences running at
6.1% (i.e., over three times the LEA rate and over six times the national rate). It is
worth pointing out, however, that both nationally and locally, schools in
deprived areas (especially those in areas with long term unemployment) have
more problems of attendance than other schools. This, of course, should not
detract from the interesting research finding (O'Keefe, 1994) that secondary
students' perception of the ease with which they could truant reflected
significant difference in actual attendance rates (a 7.7% difference between 'easy'
and 'hard' schools). It has been beyond the brief of this study to explore this issue
in relation to the particular area, or the LEA.
In the context of many job losses during the 1980’s and the 1991 riots, the focus
area declined as deprivation and unemployment increased. Such changes will
inevitably impact on the lives of young people in this community, and now it has
high school non-attendance rates, youth unemployment and youth crime. Few
young people stay on at school. The school staying on rate for 17 year olds is, at
27%, one of the lowest in the City.

22
Not surprisingly, then, there was general agreement among all the people with
whom we were able to talk during the research that non-attendance in the area
was an important issue needing to be addressed. Members of the Youth Strategy
were particularly concerned about young people in their area and described
how, when setting up the youth strategy, they were especially aware that:
... there was very little to offer young people.
Having resided in the area for many years, the strategy members to whom we
spoke had witnessed the changes that had taken place in their community. They
described how they were acutely aware that young people in the area were being
neglected and that there were:
... plenty of kids wandering round the streets when they were supposed to be at
school.
Members of the Youth Strategy were extremely positive, therefore, about the
Attendance Project. They welcomed it as a project which was community-based
and which aimed to established a link between young people, their parents and
the local school.
Similarly, the Curriculum Development Worker acknowledged that non-
attendance in the area was a huge problem and, perhaps inevitably, echoed the
positive reaction towards the Project noted above. The Curriculum Development
Worker, having trained as a teacher and worked as a youth worker, had also
worked with schools and parents in the area. She described how there was not a
negative reaction to education per se but that young people considered they were
not "being listened to" at school and that negative experiences of schooling, such
as being bullied and large class sizes, led to disillusionment and non-attendance.
A similar view was expressed by a youth worker, who worked alongside the
Curriculum Development Worker and the young people on the Project. He had
first-hand experience of witnessing young people "hanging around the streets"
during school hours, concluding, therefore, that non-attendance was a problem
in the area that needed to be tackled. The youth worker acknowledged that
across the whole of the area young people face many problems, such as poor
access to jobs and training, high levels of poverty and chaotic home
environments. Non-attendance, then, is just one of the many issues and problems
which are part of the lives of many young people in the area.
The young people participating in the Attendance Project did not speak directly
about their views on non-attendance as such, but spoke more generally about

23
their experiences on the project and the benefits they had gained. All admitted,
though, that they had been "out of school" for a considerable length of time and
implied that their non-attendance was a problem. Most young people admitted
that their time spent out of school (in some cases for two or three years) was not
especially positive. Apart from their time spent at the Attendance Project, several
young people described how they rarely left the house during school hours and
so had little contact with young people who were not involved in the Project.
When questioned about their future prospects and life beyond the Project, all the
young people admitted that an education was important and that they wanted to
return to school. Only then, they claimed, would they have any chance of getting
a job. One boy told us:
I want to get a job, I don’t know what exactly, but know I’ve got to get an
education...
Target Groups and Criteria for Referral
As originally stated, the aim of the Project was to target young people (years 7, 8
and 9) who did not attend school and parents who had concerns about their
children’s education. Participation is voluntary and referrals are via the
Community College. However, as the Curriculum Development Worker pointed
out, there was a distinct difference in the targeting and referral criteria than was
originally planned. The Curriculum Development Worker defined the proposed
referral criteria as:
Young people who attended school erratically rather than long-term non-
attenders.
The Curriculum Development Worker gave examples of such 'erratic attenders'
as those pupils who might miss school for a week, or pupils who would attend
school for one afternoon or one morning. Post-registration truancy was also
included.
This distinction, between erratic attenders and non-attenders, appears to have
been lost during the referral process. The Head of Year 9 at the Community
College referred 21 young people to the Project, of these 11 attended the Project,
usually consistently, at some point. According to the Curriculum Development
Worker, however, the original intention of working with erratic attenders "hasn’t
worked out like that" and the project has, in fact, been working with six 'erratic
attenders' and five 'non-attenders'.

24
The Curriculum Development Worker described how the referral process
actually worked:
The young people referred weren’t erratic attenders, but were kids who were
truants, who didn’t want to be at school. They weren’t expelled, or weren’t
necessarily disruptive - they just didn’t want to go.
Some of the referrals to the Project had not, in fact, attended school at all for
some time. One boy had not attended school for three years; another for two. The
Curriculum Development Worker maintains that she believed that all referrals
being made were erratic attenders rather than truants.
Members of the Youth Strategy believed that the Attendance Project targeted the
appropriate young people; those who were too young to participate in the Bridge
Course and who had complicated home lives. They admitted, too, that the
Project was particularly suitable for those young people who had been long-term
non-attenders and who spent considerable time "stood on the streets":
The young people fall by the wayside and tend to get the blame for anything that
happens on the estate. People seem to see a gang of young people and feel
vulnerable or threatened.
According to the Strategy members, the Project helped to bridge this widening
gap between young people and members of the local community. In addition,
they recognised the importance of targeting young people in the community and
believed strongly that the Project should be community-based. They were
adamant that the Project made links between the community and the school,
suggesting that it was essential for members of the community to take part in
school activities because:
... you don’t just take the kids to school and dump them at the door, and don’t
take any more interest, you need to take an interest and be part of the school as
well as the school being part of the community.
In relation to the specific referral criteria and the targeting of young people to the
project, members of the Strategy were anxious that the Attendance Project
should be available to a wider but younger age group. They also felt that it
should not be confined to the Community College alone, but should be available
to other young people in the West of the city.
The youth worker believed that the Attendance Project catered for those young
people who really needed help. Rather than be confined to a specific age group,
he spoke more in general about young people who did not "get a fair crack at the
whip" concerning education. According to the youth worker, it was the specific

25
problems each young person may face which may contribute to non-attendance
at school. These were important:
... some of them have had pretty horrific bullying experiences, some have got
chaotic home situations - in the attendance project these problems tend to be
much more at the front because they (the specific problems) may have contributed
to them not going to school.
This youth worker had considerable experience of working with young people
on the streets of the area and was very much aware of the many problems which
young people could face. In school, however, he believed that problems such as a
chaotic home-life, poverty, and so on, can be ignored - however unintentionally:
... teachers don’t seem to have much understanding or take much notice of
problems, especially home problems. They look after the majority, and these kids
tend to get overlooked.
The youth worker believed, then, that the attendance project targeted the
'minority' group of young people for whom the school might not have the time,
nor the resources, to cater for.
The Young People and their Families
As we have already mentioned, the eleven young people who joined the
Attendance Project did not match the original referral criteria exactly. The group
comprised of seven females and four males, who all lived in the area and had
been attending the Community College. We were able to interview five of the
young people - three girls and two boys. The two boys had not attended school
for two or three years, and the girls had been attending school erratically.
Schooling patterns were very similar among the young people we interviewed.
All had attended a nursery or play school and all reported a positive, happy
experience. For the majority of the group, primary school was also a happy time.
All but one young person said they had full attendance at primary school,
enjoyed the work and liked the teachers. One boy told us that on a few occasions
he had been suspended from primary school because he was fighting - a defence
he maintains, as a result of being constantly bullied and "picked on".
Through our discussions with the young people accessing the Attendance
Project, we became very much aware that non-attendance was not the only factor
that each person had in common. The range of agencies which had been
involved in some way with members of the sample was vast. These included the

26
Education Welfare Service, Social Services, Juvenile Justice, Young People’s Unit
and Education Support Services. Family background was similar too; none of
their parents had jobs at that time, and a frequent comment by the young people
was that they could not remember a time when their parents were working.
Home life for the young people can only be described as 'chaotic' for a variety of
reasons. We were startled to discover that each young person, or their family (or
both), faced a collection of problems ranging from poor housing (one young
person was one of nine living in a three bedroom house) to drug/alcohol abuse.
In this sense, although the young people had no relationship other than they
were attending the same project, they did, in fact, have very similar home
environments. Non-attendance appeared to be common among family members.
Most of the young people described how their siblings did not fully attend
school. One boy told us his sister was also being bullied at the Community
College and, as a result, she too, had been attending erratically. One other young
person told us her sister was attending the Bridge Course.
Bullying, or rather being bullied, was also an experience shared by several of the
young people. Experiences were particularly acute among the boys we
interviewed, who described horrific bullying experiences, which on one
occasion, resulted in hospital treatment. These experiences clearly were the
primary influences in their non-attendance.
Interviews with the mothers of four of the pupils confirmed the impressions
given by the young people of the acute difficulties of life in one of the city's most
socially deprived areas. By any measure, both the youngsters and their families
are confronted, on a daily basis, with a range of problems which are clearly of a
complexity which appears to render them virtually irresolvable. This was
presumably recognised in the original intentions of the initiative as
demonstrated by the number of agencies and individuals featured in early
discussions and the aim of developing a co-ordinated approach to problems such
as drug abuse.
The four mothers who came to the Project centre to be interviewed were clients
of several agencies including Social Services, the Probation Service, the Housing
Department and voluntary projects. None of the families could be described as
'regular' although they appeared representative, in terms of social indicators, of a
significant proportion of the families in the locality. A set of common factors ran
through the stories the women told the interviewers. Each of them spoke openly
and willingly with a bare minimum of prompts.
The young people were growing up in lone parent households, in most cases
with their mothers, and had erratic contact with their fathers. One mother with
two teenage girls was living in a communal house under the auspices of an

27
alcohol rehabilitation project having lost her council house because of alcohol
problems.
Three of the families had several children and in each case most of the children
presented problems. One boy had four siblings and all were causes for concern
apart from the four-month-old baby. One was in residential care and the oldest,
at 17, had no job and was in trouble for attempted theft and house breaking.
Another girl had an older sister who was on the Bridge Course having moved
between two Secondary Schools and failed to attend either. A second family had
four children who were all at different schools. The three secondary age pupils
had all moved schools after incidents involving fighting.
Ill-health was a thread that ran through all the families, with long term ear
problems a common feature. In one case the child had suffered from hearing
problems from the age of two and had not received treatment until she was
eight; not surprisingly she could barely read or write at this point. Another boy
had a perforated ear-drum which was about to be operated on and one of the
girls constantly missed school through ear infections. Her mother was herself
waiting for surgery that would repair the damage of a life time of ear infections.
A second mother had long term kidney problems that prevented her from
working although neither she nor her estranged husband had worked for a long
time.
Unemployment was a common feature and, for each of the women, the
possibility of any sort of job was remote. Behind this pattern of long term
unemployment was the shared characteristic of lack of qualifications which, in
three of the cases, was linked to poor school attendance. One woman had
worked as a play worker for seven years before an instance of family child abuse,
compounded by instances of further abuse in her work environment,
precipitated her descent into alcoholism. Ill-health was a strong contributory
factor making the four women virtually unemployable.
Poverty had both underpinned and undermined the daily lives of the families
and this was acutely felt by the women as their children became more acquisitive
and competitive as they grew up. One mother was anticipating a fine following a
Court appearance for not sending her only daughter to school. She thought she
could pay this off at £2 a week that would add up to nearly £4 with the cost of
the bus fare into the City centre to deliver the money. Her daughter was the third
generation of non-attenders in this particular family. Their fragile family
finances had been decimated before Christmas when their house was burgled
and stripped of anything vaguely saleable. Not having any insurance, she had
now to repay a loan given by Social Services to replace essential items. Burglary
is a regular feature of life in the area and there were examples given to us where

28
the families we are describing were both the perpetrators and victims of theft in
one form or another.
A key question centred on issues of non-attendance. In describing the patterns of
attendance that had brought their children into the Project, the women
interviewed picked out some recurrent features. Early problems with health,
mainly undetected hearing problems, had negatively affected reading and
writing in three cases. One boy was unable to read when he left primary school
and his mother claims this had not been noticed. The girl with hearing problems
could barely read and write and had a series of "rubbish reports". In all cases
moving up to the "big school" marked a turning point in a previously reasonable
attendance pattern. Feelings towards the Community College ranged from
"didn't like it" to "hated it" and being "totally miserable". Low academic attainment
and erratic attendance was accompanied by bullying; ending in complete non-
attendance. In three of the cases this took the form of parentally condoned
absence. The mothers interviewed quoted other young people in the area with
equally bad or even worse attendance. They compared notes on procedures and
likely outcomes of Court appearances. Truancy is not regarded as a particularly
shameful fact and there are apparently always other young people around to
keep each other company.
The Attendance Project Programme
When asked about their views of the Attendance Project as a whole, the young
people responded very positively. Each person talked at length about their
favourite parts of the Project, the activities they liked doing the most and, briefly,
about aspects of the Project of which they were not so enthusiastic.
In regards to specific special activities such as the Video Project, the reaction
from the young people was unwaveringly positive. Each person described how
he or she had various roles, responsibilities and levels of involvement in the
whole project. The young people were particularly appreciative of the fact that
they had a choice in what they did or could contribute to the project. One girl, for
instance, was not keen on appearing in front of the camera and while this could
have led to exclusion, she took on the role of developing a script and directing
the filming.
The process of making the video appeared to be important to the young people
who spoke at length about their various roles in the film. The video was also
important to the young people by virtue of the fact that it aimed to tackle the
issue of bullying. This was pertinent to the lives of several of the young people -

29
and the school - and the young people believed strongly that their experiences
could be used to convey a valuable message. One boy told us:
... I’ve got to act - I’m good at that. It’s about school, and what we think about
school. We talk about bullying and what it can do to people and it will get shown
at the school when we’ve finished it.
Equally as important as the process of being involved in the making of the video
was the fact that the end product, the film itself, would be a clear and tangible
outcome with a valid message for the Community College and members of the
Youth Strategy:
It’s going to get shown to the school and the people that work here [Support
Centre], just to prove to them why we’ve been running around the building and
to the school that we’re doing something worthwhile while we’re here.
The residential trip was another aspect of the Project that the young people
talked about at length. Here the emphasis was very much placed on physical
activities and included rock climbing, hiking, camping and waterfall jumping.
Although all the young people said they enjoyed the programme immensely,
there was a clear difference between the girls and the boys that we interviewed.
Among the boys, the positive features were the physically-demanding activities,
especially the waterfall jumping. One boy described the waterfall jumping as
"fun" and another described this as the best part of the Project for him personally:
Jumping off the rocks into the water from the highest bit. That was really good,
because nobody else would dare do it at first ... I’ve got confidence, me, so once I
had done it then everyone else dared to do it.
In sharp contrast, however, was the reaction of the girls we spoke to about their
experiences of the residential course. One girl told us:
It was horrible. We had to jump in waterfalls, it was horrible, it was in September
... I didn’t enjoy any of it.
Another girl described how difficult she found rock climbing and recounted a
time when she physically was so scared she became stuck and "had to be rescued".
On a positive note, however, the girls told us how they enjoyed all the other
aspects of going on the residential trips; the night games, working as a team and
the camping and cooking. The benefits of such experiences of group work and
team-building activities were described in a positive light by all the young
people to whom we spoke. One girl described how she now found it easier to
talk to people because she felt more confident and was even arranging the next

30
weekend trip away to Blackpool. One boy told us how much he liked working as
a team because "you get to know people better that way".
In addition to these group work and team activities, the Attendance Project
offers one-to-one contact (with the Curriculum Development Worker) to a young
person who needs it. Work during this time includes literacy classes, counselling
and identifying and working towards individual action plans. This feature of the
Attendance Project was again regarded as extremely positive by the young
people.
Through our discussions with the young people, it became very obvious that
they believed large school class sizes were one of the worst features about
school. In fact, teaching group sizes at the Community College are relatively
small - 18.6 at the time of the Ofsted Inspection - and, it would appear, are even
smaller now. Nevertheless, several young people spoke of "not being heard" and
"it’s too noisy" at school, and valued the individual attention they received during
their one-to-one work with the Curriculum Development Worker. Each young
person worked this way to varying degrees, which seemed to be based on
individual needs rather than rigid guidelines. One boy, who actually could read
very little before he joined the Project, was receiving literacy lessons from the
Curriculum Development Worker. For this particular boy, who had been absent
from school for three years, the work was invaluable and was an important part
of his contact with the Project:
I’ve learnt all kinds of different stuff. ...[the Curriculum Development Worker] ...
gave me this ghost book and I had to read all the way through it before I could
copy off it, I finished that and learnt some stuff, like learning to spell, and learnt
how to read magazines.
This young person went on to describe a special project which he was
completing on an individual basis. This was a Family Album requiring him to
take photographs of all his family and write about each member next to the
photograph. He was clearly enjoying this project when we spoke to him, and had
been showing it to some of his family, although he was keeping it as a surprise
Christmas present for his mother.
A main focus to the work undertaken during the Attendance Project appears to
be non-curriculum based. One girl described how she had written a letter - using
an electronic type-writer - to the Chairperson of the Youth Strategy. This was the
first time she had attempted something like this and was initially reluctant to
attempt it. Despite this, she completed the task and was pleased when she
received a reply from the Chairperson. This, the young person admitted, was a

31
skill which she had learnt from the Project, that she felt would help her later on
her life:
... I know how to use a computer and that. I know how to work cameras. I didn’t
have any confidence, I’m always quiet, but that was worse when I was at school.
It’s better here ...

32
Attendance at the Attendance Project Programme
The nature of the programme does not lend itself to easily quantifiable figures
for attendance. Participants joined at different times, returned to school on a
partial or full basis or, in one case, left the Project. Thus, for example a 71%
attendance rate for the person who left the project masks the fact that this
involved attending only 10 group sessions. On the other hand, one of those who
returned to school had an attendance rate at Project group sessions of 67% (one
of the lowest figures). Registers for the twice weekly group sessions show a
range of from 50%-93%, with three of the young people recording over 90%
attendance.
It would appear, then, that the Attendance Project does cater for a group who
would benefit from some form of educational intervention beyond that normally
available in school. Furthermore, the young people and their families involved in
the project seem to value the experience. In the next section we turn to the
outcomes of the project.

33
Section 3
The outcomes of the Attendance Project
In this section we consider the outcomes of the Attendance Project. It is worth
remembering that, for various reasons, the Project has been operational in the
form described in this report for a matter of months rather than years. It is at an
early stage, and commenting on the educational impact of this particular scheme
really requires a longer term perspective than that available to the evaluation
team. As noted in Section One of this report, the Project had been set up with a
twin focus on young people and on parents. It is in relation to those two groups,
therefore, that we wish to concentrate the discussion in this section. We begin
with the parents because they have both a specific legal duty and a key role in
ensuring school attendance. We then make some comments on what is currently
happening to the young people involved, but recognise that this will be a
constantly changing picture.
The Parents of Those Involved in the Project
The four mothers interviewed spoke very positively about the impact the Project
was having on their children and the support they themselves were receiving
from the Curriculum Development Worker and the Education Welfare Officer
(EWO). The role of the EWO has clearly been a pivotal one in initiating and
sustaining communications between the Project, the families and the
Community College. The fact that the EWO had worked in the area for some
time and had established good working relationships with the Year Tutor and
with 'at-risk' pupils and their families, strengthened the key role she played in
the Project. Parents recognised and appreciated the information and support
they received in deciding to become involved in the Project.
In talking more specifically about any observed changes in their children, the
mothers were careful to explain the state both they and the children had reached
at the point they became involved, and the gradual process of acceptance and
further commitment that took place.
One of the girls, with perhaps the most worrying attendance record, had taken
six months to get to the point of a partial return to school, no doubt partly
prompted by an imminent Court case. Her mother said that her daughter was
"far from stupid" and "brilliant at art" and the Project had worked on these
glimmers of hope to build up her confidence. She also acknowledged that strong
local and personal factors acted against the efforts of the Project, namely the

34
number of other young people who were not in school, as well as her daughter's
determination to get a job and abandon all thoughts of education.
A second mother elaborated the difficulties her son faced simply in taking the
first step and physically entering the Project base in the 'Pink Palace'. She
described the build up of visits by the EWO, the discussions with the Head of
Year at the Community College and the struggle to get him to attend the Project.
Again, the Curriculum Development Worker had identified the glimmer of hope
in the boy's wish to go to another college where he has friends. The Project was
supporting him in building up a better attendance record while at the same time
working on his low level of literacy. His mother thought that she had "caught that
little bugger reading", although he is classed as a non-reader. She described the
Curriculum Development Worker as "very supportive, the best I've had so far" and
spoke appreciatively of the home visits when she would talk about her son and
plan the next step. Once more the mother talked about the local pull factors
which militate against the Project, particularly the number of young people who
hang around the nearby pub in school time. A significant local feature is what
she described as the "code of honour" which presumed that any one going into the
Pink Palace was "grassing" and that other kids would "get him" when he came
out. The boy was due in court on criminal charges so the threats were perceived
as far from empty.
The mother of one of the girls spoke of her continuing struggle to gain any sort
of response from her daughter on school matters, apart from a characteristic
"shrug of the shoulders" and the response that "school's boring!". She described her
daughter as a "good reader and reasonable at maths" but with a history of post-
registration truancy. Since joining the Project her attendance had improved and
she had "opened up and started to talk". She talked about what was happening on
the Project and planning for the trip to Blackpool. The girl was living with her
father in another area and, at the time of the interview, her mother did not think
she was going to school. The Curriculum Development Worker kept in touch
with both parents, making frequent visits to the mother who had no telephone.
The fourth mother also spoke very positively about the impact of the Project and
the supportive collaborative link between the Head of Year, the Education
Welfare Officer and the Curriculum Development Worker. She came for the
interview accompanied by her social worker and was clearly in a vulnerable
emotional and physical state. Her two daughters' truancy had been one of a
series of severe family problems and she worried constantly about her
daughters' whereabouts when not in school. Since attending the Project, her
attendance had picked up and her mother had noticed her reading a day trip
brochure. Previously she had "never seen her read anything and wouldn't think she
would ever bother to pick up anything to read". The mother felt reassured knowing

35
that, while on the Project, her daughter "was safe and was learning and liking what
she was doing". The Curriculum Development Worker kept in close contact with
the mother "writing little notes" and "wishing her a happy New Year".
It would seem, therefore, that in relation to the parents, the Attendance Project
has the following outcomes. It has:
• managed to involve at least some of the parents in what happens to their
children at the Project. Many of these are unlikely to have been involved
previously in their school life;
• helped as a catalyst for the other support agencies working with the
young people and their families; and
• provided some tangible signs of progress in the education of their
children for the parents.
The Young People Involved in the Project
As was noted in Section 2 of this report, the young people involved in the Project
do not represent a homogenous group but a collection of individuals, each of
whom represents a nexus for a variety of factors which impact on school
attendance. Inevitably, then, the work of the Project has been differential in its
effects upon them. Essentially, however, we identified four categories of
response in terms of attendance and reintegration into schooling.
First, there are those young people, all girls, who are back in school. Clearly, for
them this is not the end of the story but the beginning of another chapter. What
will be of interest in the longer term will be the extent to which they both sustain
and benefit from re-integration into the process of schooling.
Second, there are those who either are already back at school on a partial
timetable and also attending some of the Project sessions, or who are scheduled
to do so very soon. As with the above group, only time will tell whether this
moves towards full re-integration and is sustained.
Third, there are those who are still involved only with the Project and for whom
this represents their only route at the moment into education. This does not
mean, of course, that they are not working towards some form of re-integration,
although not necessarily into, the Community College.
Finally, there are the very small minority for whom the Project does not seem to
have worked and who no longer attend.

36
Turning to academic performance through involvement in the Project, the
picture is less clear. Through both the self-reports of the young people
themselves and the corroborating anecdotal evidence supplied by their mothers,
we can report that there is a perception of improvement in literacy. This is not
supported by any data produced through the measurement of a test of any type.
We consider this not to have been a feasible course of action for several reasons
that are described more fully in Appendix 1. Nevertheless, we would remind the
reader that absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
It would seem, therefore, that in relation to the young people involved, the
Attendance Project has the following outcomes. It has:
• improved the school attendance of the majority of the participants,
including re-integrating several back into mainstream education;
• provided continued support for the young people upon their re-
integration back into education;
• developed the self esteem and confidence of many of the young people;
and
• contributed to a perception of improvement in the literacy of some of the
young people.
The Cost of the Project
The post of Curriculum Development Worker was not full-time, but 0.75%. As
well as the salary costs (including on-costs) for this post, there were a number of
other costs. These included a payment of £1,500 per year to the Support Centre
for administrative support, a budget for the worker, travel and training costs.
The running costs for the Project, as supplied by the LEA, are £14,163 for 1995-6
and £19,871 for 1996-7, i.e., a total of £34,034.
The Attendance Project, therefore, would appear to have achieved some
identifiable outcomes in relation to both young people and their parents during
the time that it has been operating. In the next section, we present our overall
conclusions.

37
Section 4
Conclusion
In this Section we present our overall conclusions, point up the central issue as
we see it for the EAS Management Group and offer some recommendations. In
doing so we go back to the brief set for the evaluation team, namely to evaluate
the Attendance Project against the aims and objectives established for it when
set up. We include a consideration both of the wider context of the Educational
Achievement Strategy and of 'value for money'.
Evaluating the Attendance Project in Relation to its Aims and Objectives
The research sought to evaluate the work of the Attendance Project against its
own terms of reference. As was pointed out in Section One, the aims and
objectives set in the documentation provide a clear statement of the criteria by
which the work of the Project might be judged. In these terms, despite the short
time-scale of the Project, it has been successful, and this success is acknowledged
by the stakeholders consulted during the evaluation. The issue of the 'provision
of an appropriate curriculum' is the only one of the criteria where there would be
debate. Here the issue is what constitutes 'appropriateness'? Schools are legally
bound to deliver the National Curriculum, but this may be associated with
failure or boredom for some pupils. Furthermore, without literacy and numeracy
the National Curriculum may remain inaccessible for some pupils. The
curriculum, however, is also constituted by the way in which it is delivered and,
for some pupils at least, this may be crucial in their learning. We return to the
implications of this later.
Evaluating the Attendance Project in Relation to the Wider Context of the
Educational Achievement Strategy
Where there is criticism of the Attendance Project, this relates to the wider frame
of the LEA policy on attendance, the overall work of the EAS and the specific
agendas of the Curriculum Development Worker, the Strategy and the
Community College. Three facts emerge in stark outline.
The geographical focus for the research is a hard place in which to live and the
local community, through the Strategy, is committed to tackling the complex,
deeply rooted problems of the area and of its young residents. Hard core truancy
is a problem which will not go away and if ignored will build up problems

38
which will simply re-appear in a more serious manifestation in the community.
We have seen this in the second and third generation of family problems
encountered in the course of this small scale research.
The Community College has its own internal agenda for implementing the
Action Plan designed to get the College out of the special measures required by
Ofsted. The new Principal is concerned to put in place effective strategies for
raising the quality of education provided for all its pupils. The opening of the
new Access Centre and the curriculum reviews play a central role in this.
Decisions have to include the amount of effort and resourcing that can be
directed at the ten to fifteen percent of chronic non-attenders who feature in
attendance statistics.
The Curriculum task set by the original remit of the Curriculum Development
Worker post was an enormous undertaking, requiring significant knowledge of
curriculum content and of the process of implementation. With hindsight, it was
almost inevitable that the work of this EAS project officer would require
refinement and refocusing. Unfortunately, this very process brought to the
surface some very real differences in ideological approaches to the problem that
were not resolved. To a large extent, this relates back to definitions of the nature
and scale of the problem and, therefore, to the type of provision that might be
deemed appropriate. This debate is not merely a local one. There are concerns
about the dangers in providing special provision for those who have not
succeeded, for whatever reason, in mainstream provision. Some flavour of the
debate is captured by the term "goodies for baddies" (Learmonth, 1995) sometimes
used for such provision.
The EAS is a complex approach to the fundamental problems of part of the city
and is dependent upon the synergy of its various interlocking strands. That is
why 'partnership' was a crucial part of its processes. The post of Curriculum
Development Worker was intended to be part of this overall strategic approach.
As such it encountered a similar range of conceptual and implementation
problems to those found elsewhere in the Strategy as a whole and which are
documented in the EAS Evaluation Report. In the case of the Curriculum
Development Worker post, however, this evolved into more or less a single
worker project with all the drawbacks this type of set-up entails.
In terms of its contribution to the success of the overall EAS Project, any
evaluation must conclude that the impact of the Attendance Project is negligible.
There appears to have been no input, for whatever reason, into the review and
development of the curriculum at the Community College nor of its pastoral and
student support systems. Given the size of the attendance problem and the
cultural and structural dimensions of schooling that influence non-attendance

39
this is a glaring omission. We cannot but conclude that our study confirms the
finding of Carlen, Gleeson and Wardhaugh, (1992) that "... there is much pain, hurt
and suffering around current educational arrangements" (p. 159). As such, although it
may be difficult to confront the implications of doing so, without tackling these
cultural and structural issues, the problems of countless other young people may
remain unaddressed.
Evaluating the Project in Terms of Value for Money
The issue of 'value for money' is complex. It would be impossible to do a
complete cost-benefit analysis since these are always comparative. They require
the definition of alternatives to be compared and an identification of the limits of
the comparison. The potential here for alternatives range from mainstream
schools through special schools to pupil referral units. The limits might extend
beyond schooling into adulthood and include categories of effects such as
employment, involvement in crime and delinquency, dependence on welfare
and social services, and so on. Although it is easy to assign monetary values to
project costs, it is far more difficult to accurately estimate the monetary value of
its benefits. The discussion in this section can, therefore, only be tentative.
Ofsted inspections of schools use a summative judgement of value for money,
which relates the educational standards achieved and the quality of education
provided to the income of the school, taking into account appropriate contextual
factors and using comparisons with similar schools. The data does not exist to
make informed judgements about the educational standards achieved nor of any
'value added' by the Project. Even if it did, the time-scale of the few months of
operation of the Project as a teaching-learning process might not take sufficient
account of the sorts of 'learning curves' that, it might be argued, could be
anticipated with such young people. Furthermore, the contextual factors needing
to be taken into account are those of a very atypical group of learners.
Comparisons are somewhat easier, although still this is not comparing like with
like. The running costs for this Project are higher than those for the Bridge
Course, which involves nothing more than a teacher's salary. The unit costs per
pupil at the Project during this academic year are £1,806.45. On one level, this
seems to compare reasonably favourably with unit costs for Year 9 pupils of
£1,761.63 across the whole of the LEA and £2,331.82 for the Community College.
However, it should be borne in mind that:
1. The Attendance Project only operates for part of the week. Even taking
a generous interpretation of pupils having 0.75 education per week in the
Project, for a full week of education it could exceed the unit costs even of

40
the Community College (a pro rata conversion would suggest a figure of
£2,408.60);
2. The actual unit costs for each of the pupils should include their unit
costs at the Community College where they are included on the roll. This
is regardless of whether they actually attend the College or not. This
would suggest that the actual unit costs for each of the young people
involved in the Project is more like a figure of £4,138.27.
3. Turning to pupil: teacher ratio, again there are a number of
complicating factors. The Project has a ratio of 11:1 but, essentially, the
pupils only attend part-time. The Community College had a ratio of 13.9:1
at the time of the Ofsted report (although the ratio may now be closer to
that of the Project) but, according to the same report, the average teaching
group size was 18.6. According to Learmonth (1995), these pupil: teacher
ratios are typical of those found in units working with 'hard-core' non-
attenders.
Perhaps, the most critical factor is to consider what else might have been done
with the available resource and its likely impact on educational outcomes.
Might, for example, these young people have reasonably been educated in
special provision on the school site? This would have saved some costs if it had
been possible but would have affected only the attendees. In relation to the same
group of pupils, time for form tutors to visit the families and develop supportive
relationships might have been funded. This would have enhanced the
knowledge of staff who had to support the pupils in the school context.
Alternatively, strategies might have been developed that had wider effects than
these particular pupils, impacting upon the rest of the school population at the
College. The funding of a review and development of the College's curriculum
and pedagogy, for example, might have achieved the necessary structural and
cultural changes which would have made schooling more attractive not only to
these eleven pupils but also to many others. Similarly, releasing the Community
College teachers for high quality professional development might have been a
possibility given that the Project costs would have funded nearly 300 days of
teacher supply cover.
Taking a longer-term perspective, the more fundamental problems of the area
might have been effectively tackled in a preventative way through early
childhood intervention programmes. Little longitudinal research into the
economic consequences of such programmes has been undertaken in this
country although there is some evidence from the North American context. The
Perry Pre-school Project, for example, had a primary aim of preventing
adolescent delinquency and school drop out amongst 'high risk' children. The

41
longitudinal studies (Weikart et al., 1978, 1980, 1984, 1993), involving
experimental and control groups, suggest that participants were more likely to
be receptive learners at school, socially responsible, and less likely to be involved
in criminal activity in later years. A cost-benefit analysis estimated that, by age
19, there was a benefit-cost ratio of $7.18 returned for every dollar invested and
at age 27 this cost effectiveness was maintained. The £34,000 invested in the
Attendance Project, if invested in such programmes for three and four year olds
in the area, might have improved responses to schooling, improved employment
prospects, and reduced both crime and social service support. In relation to the
effective use of available funding for tackling the educational priorities of the
area, then, and the other ways in which that funding might have been used (of
which only a few possibilities have been outlined), it would be reasonable to
conclude that the Project does not represent value for money.
The Central Issue for Consideration
Pupils respond in different ways to the experience of schooling. One of the
problems that we have is to explain the considerable variation that occurs in both
their responses to educational processes and their educational achievement.
Non-attendance is one of the variations that, as yet, remains large on rhetoric but
short on effective action. Learning is very much influenced by context and, by
the same token, 'learning failures' may be failures of context. The difficulty is
deciding what aspects of the context are involved in this. In a sense, the 'context'
is best seen as a 'nested concept' in which different levels require different types
of decision and of action but where the possibilities for action and the constraints
upon it at any particular level are often influenced by what happens at other
levels (see Figure 2). Tackling the problem of non-attendance, therefore, is
helped when these actions at different level work together and create a synergy.
At a basic level the classroom, for example, is the context in which somehow or
other what has taken place between a particular pupil and his/her teacher has
failed to create a framework for learning to develop. This may involve elements
of the provision, of the materials, or of the ways of teaching that are
inappropriate for at least some of the pupils. At another level is the school,
where such things as the procedures, structures and geography may fail a pupil.
Pasternicki et al. (1993), for example, point out that geographical and registration
systems problems within a school can promote truancy and evade detection and
addressing how students leave and how they can be more effectively monitored
could reduce the problem. At another level is the community in which the school
is located where we find social, cultural and even physical characteristics that
work against school attendance. Casey and Smith (1995), for example, identify
various common factors linking truants: low socio-economic status, single parent

42
families or being in care, living in council accommodation, being black. At yet
another level is the LEA which has a long-term, co-ordinated, multi-level
strategy for approaching the problem of attendance but, in seeking to implement
it, has to consider national policy, including resourcing, the local communities in
which attendance is a problem, and so on.
the classroom
the school
the community
the LEA
National Policy
Figure 2.
A 'Nested Model' of the contexts for addressing the problem
of non-attendance
Underlying the alteration of focus in the work of the Curriculum Development
Worker and the concomitant emergence of the Attendance Project are clear
differences in orientation towards the central issue of attendance. Although non-
attendance manifests in the individual who needs help and support, that
individual is from - and has to return to - a wider context where the structural
and cultural issues that impact the individual need to be addressed. The
dilemma is more acute when there is pressure on resources. The more different
parts of the system can work in a coherent way, the more hope there will be of a
sustained impact on the problem.
This last point takes us back to an important issue raised in the main Evaluation
Report, namely the meaning of 'partnership'. Given the problems confronting
this community and the issues raised in this report, we feel that the only hope for
any lasting improvement of the educational and life-chances of these young
people is through the active and constructive working together of all agencies
involved. A strong sub-text throughout our investigations has been of, at times,

43
difficult interpersonal relationships influencing responses to key issues. We
report this rather than seek retrospective explanations. However, it is as
unrealistic to pretend that these do not exist and are unlikely to have influenced
developments as it is to pretend that they may not influence the future. We are
not suggesting that the pursuit of harmony is more important than the pursuit of
informed and critical judgement, we merely wonder whether in this case either
have been achieved. It seems inevitable that a range of perspectives will exist on
a complex problem such as non-attendance. In retrospect, the fact that this
conflict of ideas was resolved by, in effect, concentrating on this particular group
of young people without addressing the fundamental roots of the wider problem
of non-attendance seems like a lost opportunity.
Recommendations
In the light of the discussion in this report, we recommend that:
1. Any future work on non-attendance in this area addresses both the
problems of particular non-attenders and the curricular, pedagogical and
pastoral issues within the Community College which will enable
returning young people to feel more at ease in the College and more able
to access the curriculum.
2. The expertise of teachers within the College and the Learning Support
Service be utilised to ensure the highest quality of support available
within literacy and numeracy provision for project participants prior to
re-integration.
3. The facilities, including the technology, of the Access Centre at the
Community College be used actively to support the re-integration of non-
attenders.
4. If the Attendance Project continues, the Curriculum Development Worker
designs further developments in line with recommendations 1-3 above.
5. If the Attendance Project continues, staff at the Community College
should concentrate referrals on erratic attenders rather long-term non-
attenders.
6. Serious consideration be given to preventative work in primary schools in
order to anticipate and prevent later hard-core absenteeism as this may
represent better value for money.

44

45
References
Bell, A.J., Rosen, L.A., and Dynlacht, D. (1994) 'Truancy Intervention', Journal of
Research and Development in Education, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 203-11.
Carlen, P., Gleeson, D. and Wardhaugh, J. (1992) Truancy: The Politics of
Compulsory Schooling (Milton Keynes: Open University Press).
Casey, B. and Smith, D. (1995) Truancy and Youth Transitions
(London: HMSO).
Educational Achievement Strategy (EAS) (1995) Annual Report 1994-5
(Newcastle upon Tyne: EAS).
Easen, P., Ford, K., Higgins, S., Todd, L. and Wootten, M. (1996) The Educational
Achievement Strategy: An evaluation of the first eighteen months of operation of
the project in the West End of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle upon Tyne:
Department of Education).
Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools (1994) Access and Achievement in
Urban Education (London: HMSO).
Learmonth, J. (1995) More Willingly To School? An Independent Evaluation of
the Truancy and Disaffected Pupils Dest Programme (London: DfEE).
O’Keefe, D.J. (1994) Truancy in English Secondary Schools: A report for DfE
(London: HMSO).
Pasternicki, G., Wakefield, D., Robertson, J. and Edwards, L. (1993) 'A school
based action research project on truancy: within school factors' Support for
Learning, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 3-6.
Richardson, C. (1996) Curriculum Development Worker Reports
.
Weikart, D., Weber, C. and Foster, P. (1978) An Economic Analysis of the
Ypsilanti Perry Pre-school Project, (Ypsilanti: High/Scope Educational Research
Foundation).
Weikart, D. and Schweinhart, I. (1980) Young Children Growing Up: The Effects
of the Perry Pre-school Program on Youths Through Age 15, (Ypsilanti:
High/Scope Educational Research Foundation).

46
Weikart, D., Bernetta-Clement, I., Schweinhart, I. Barnett, W., and Epstein, A.,
(1984), Changed Lives: The Effects Of The Perry Pre-school Program On Youths
Through Age 19 (Ypsilanti: High/Scope Educational Research Foundation).
Weikart, D., Schweinhart, I. and Barnes, H. with Barnett, W., and Epstein, A.,
(1993) Significant Benefits: The High/Scope Perry Pre-school Study Through Age
27 (Ypsilanti: High/Scope Educational Research Foundation).
Wilkinson, S, (1996) Position Statement: Attendance (Executive Summary)
(Newcastle upon Tyne: Educational Achievement Strategy).

47
Appendix 1
The purpose and methodology of the evaluation
The Purpose of the Evaluation
The evaluation team was commissioned by the EAS Project to evaluate the work
of the Attendance Project. This was to be carried out against the aims and
objectives established for the Attendance Project when it was set up. We have
since been asked to include a consideration of 'value for money' which
inevitably sets the work within the wider context of the Educational
Achievement Strategy.
How the Evaluation was Carried Out
The evaluation was conducted using two main approaches:
1. An analysis of documentation relating to the Attendance Project,
including reports prepared by the Project Worker and statistics supplied
by the LEA.
2. Semi structured interviews with those involved in the Project. These
have been with young people who attended the Project and some of their
parents, the Attendance Project Worker, the Youth Worker involved with
the Project, the Educational Welfare Officer mostly closely linked with
the Project, representatives of the Support Strategy, the EAS Project
Manager, the Principal of the Community College and the Head of Year
9 who has liaised with the Project.
Analysis of the data was undertaken in two stages: an initial analysis was done
as the data were gathered and a further analysis was undertaken when all data
had been gathered. The explanations offered and the issues identified may not
be the only ones possible from the available data but they are, in the team’s
view, the most plausible.
A first draft of the report was discussed with the members of the Management
Group who were invited to submit further comment. Three people did so and
we have taken these into account in revising the draft.

48
The Problems of Testing in such an Evaluation
The evaluation was carried out on a Project that had been operational for only a
matter of months; the evaluation itself was small-scale. A neat experimental
design, using a control group and rigorous testing, was not an option available
to the team. First of all, the Project was well underway when we were requested
to undertake an evaluation. We would have had no control over the conditions
of any previous testing. Secondly, it would be insufficient to use previous test
results, even if their administration met our criteria, if the tests did not yield the
type of information we required. The central problem in any test is that it is not
necessarily learning that is assessed but the performance of some kind of
behaviour that is presumed to represent learning. Furthermore, much of learning
is not easily quantifiable although some aspects of the 'performance' are.
Consequently, aspects such as 'word recognition', 'accuracy when reading' or
'comprehension' might be taken to 'stand for' or 'indicate' reading in a broader
and more complex sense. Indeed, one of the major issues in the literacy field is
the variety of reading tests exist which do use different 'indicators' as the basis of
their measurement. Coherence, then, of testing would have presented some
problems and the validity of the results a major one.
Caveats about the Evaluation Report
Inevitably there are caveats that should be made about the evaluation. In
particular it should be noted that:
(1) Interviews as a form of data-gathering are susceptible to many influences
such as where the interview takes place and who conducts the interview.
This is particularly so with young people and with sensitive issues such
as school attendance. This can affect the nature and quality of the data
gathered with implications for the validity of the study.
(2) There has been some debate between the Attendance Project Worker and
the evaluation team about the nature and approach of the evaluation.
The evaluation team considers that it has sought to gather the
perceptions of the various stake-holders in the Project as fully and fairly
as possible within the constraints of a small-scale study of this nature.
We believe that this debate should not impact the very important issues
discussed in the report itself.