Janice Allen is the Headteacher at Falinge Park Excessive Faculty, a combined group secondary college in Rochdale. Falinge Park has labored intently with a variety of native charities to help the college’s drive to enhance attendance.
Understanding the basis reason for persistent absence
The pandemic has highlighted the vital hyperlink between college attendance and pupils’ schooling and progress. As a headteacher, I can see the wide selection of points that have an effect on kids’s common attendance. Typically these are advanced points affecting the entire household, with a few of the most severe being monetary issues, homelessness or housing insecurity, and in some situations alcohol and substance abuse.
As a faculty, we recognise that we have to take motion to help households in these conditions however we additionally recognise that we can not do that alone, and that we shouldn’t have the experience to deal with these points ourselves. Via our partnership with our native Voluntary, Group and Social Enterprise (VCSE) partnership, we now have recognized a variety of native charities who have been finest suited to serving to us deal with a few of these root causes to persistent absence.
Protecting the group on the coronary heart of the college
By constructing sturdy relationships with charities domestically, we now have gained further help for our work to deal with a few of the root causes of absence. We’re:
- Working with the Youth Service and Early Break, a substance misuse charity, to handle youth violence and delinquent behaviour inside the group by supporting pupils to interact in constructive alternatives outdoors of faculty resembling volunteering or sports activities. The charity additionally conducts walks outdoors of faculty hours within the native space to instantly cope with anti-social behaviour points.
- Supporting our pupils to assist them recognise home and gender-based violence with organisations like Rochdale’s Ladies’s Welfare. They labored with our pupils in order that they might know the place to get the precise help if that is one thing they’re experiencing themselves or in the event that they know a buddy or another person who’s.
- Elevating consciousness of drug misuse and supporting these affected by way of an organisation referred to as Early Break, who specialize in working with younger folks on these points. Early Break additionally works with pupils throughout their transition into secondary college and with those that have dad and mom who’re incarcerated.
- Working with Manchester Central Foodbank to offer a welfare officer to work with households as soon as every week. This work consists of sensible help like serving to the household to safe their common credit score allowance, finishing Private Independence Funds, and even supporting the seek for housing.
- Supporting new migrant households with language boundaries by constructing a mum or dad partnership with help from our Group Warehouse led by Motion Collectively (umbrella VCSE) the place households can entry meals, clothes, and language help.
We’re nonetheless firstly of the journey and I do know we now have not but absolutely realised the potential of those partnerships. I hope, nonetheless, that by working with the area people we are able to higher help our kids and households.
Making a construction that permits a group targeted strategy
To be sure that this work is embedded within the college, we additionally help our employees to have the capability to volunteer and take part in group work. By offering area for employees to undertake this work, we are able to guarantee we’re giving again to the group and our kids can see the vital hyperlink between college, dwelling and their native space. There may be nonetheless a protracted technique to go but on our attendance journey however this fashion of working might show efficient in the long term. If we harness the facility of our communities and place-based organisations then we are able to, I consider, handle a few of the intractable points that we face in faculties.
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