Low-attendance college students aren’t ‘hidden NEETs’

The recent Children’s Commissioner report on ‘hidden NEETs’ highlighted the very real need for a national definition and record of post-16 attendance. However, it also made the claim that attendance recording in colleges is poor and needs to improve, that more than half of college students are ‘persistently absent’ and characterised young people with low college attendance as ‘hidden NEETs’.

This perspective has not gone down well with the FE sector. While the report’s recommendations are welcome, notably the call for free bus travel for all 16 to 18-year-olds, what was off-target was the implication that colleges are not consistently capturing or using attendance data.

In over 20 years of senior leadership in three different colleges, I must have interviewed and enrolled thousands of students and delivered hundreds of induction talks and assemblies of various kinds. In every single one of those talks, briefings and conversations I emphasised the importance of attendance and punctuality as part of our expectation of all students, set out clearly in the learning agreement that students sign. None of this was unusual. I was simply emphasising what all my colleagues were also saying across the college and across the sector.

In a blog I wrote in 2015, while I was a college principal in East London, I summarised our 10 key expectations of all students, backed up by a justification for each one. Entitled ‘sharing the secrets of success’ it was based on my welcome talk to all students.

It told them their attendance target should be 100 per cent, and that “being punctual is about respect; respect for your teacher, who has planned a full lesson, respect for fellow students, who are inconvenienced when you arrive late and of course, respect for yourself as a committed student”.

When students progress at the age of 16, it’s important to acknowledge that they have made a choice of where to study and could have enrolled elsewhere.

Once that decision is made, they need to sign up to the basic rules of the educational community they’re joining, not out of a fear of ‘punishment’ but because these are the rules that will make that community work for them and for everyone else. Conversely, if a student feels that the classes they’re attending are not working for them, or not worth attending, we need to listen and take their concerns seriously.

In every college I have worked in and in every college I know, high expectations of attendance are built into students’ learning agreements. And while we may not use the disciplinary methods of schools, such as detentions, we have a range of support systems to help students get back on track if their attendance slips, and there is the ultimate sanction of withdrawal, used as little as possible.

Colleges collect, record and use attendance data as part of their day-to-day work. They know that good attendance patterns need to be established early and they are ‘on the case’ quickly with students experiencing difficulties.

Some students will need more support and encouragement to establish good routines often with family and ‘wraparound’ support, and colleges often employ dedicated tutors or mentors to do this.

Clearly, 100 per cent sustained attendance is not achievable for everyone. Life gets in the way, people get sick, dependants need to be cared for, transport services break down. So realistically, aggregate attendance rates in the high 80s and low 90s can be consistent with students’ individual commitment to 100 per cent.

We also need to acknowledge the additional challenges faced by a sector which disproportionately serves communities facing barriers to participation and which is expected to spearhead the re-engagement of the disengaged. This will sometimes mean accepting low but improving levels of engagement rather than exclusion.

To describe young people with low college attendance as ‘hidden NEETs’ is misleading. Many of these students will be on a path to re-engagement in education after a period of disengagement. They are often ‘on their way in’ to education rather than ‘on their way out’.

If colleges have lower attendance levels than school sixth forms, this may be because they recruit the very students schools don’t retain after Year 11.

The fact that colleges offer an environment where these students feel welcome and supported is surely to be celebrated. Would we want colleges to stop the work they do to re-engage these young people and write them off in order to hit an arbitrary attendance target?

Colleges have no problem with being held to account for student attendance. They can see the need for a consistent national definition to make this possible and they are keen to help co-produce a system that properly recognises the work they do to engage and support the full range of young people they serve.

These important objectives can be achieved without misrepresenting colleges’ work.