Department for Education data highlights an upward trend in national absence (7.6%) and persistent absence (22.5%) rates for the last academic year, compared with pre-pandemic levels of 4%–5% and 12.1% respectively.
And while the Education Committee inquiry looks into the causes of plummeting school attendance, including links with economic disadvantage, SEND requirements and ethnicity, schools face mounting pressure to tackle the problem head-on.
IRIS Education’s automated calling software, IRIS Absence Call, provides schools with the tools they need to effectively tackle poor attendance, reduce unauthorised absences, and improve punctuality and parental engagement.
Automate the process
Part of IRIS Education’s innovative suite of parental engagement tools, IRIS Absence Call integrates with any MIS platform to automatically flag any unexpected absences before automating first-point-of-contact via phone call, text, or email.
Thanks to its inclusive design, parents are empowered to communicate with their child’s school for free, at a time and via a method that suits them, which strengthens partnerships – including with hard-to-reach families.
Impossible to ignore
What’s more, IRIS Absence Call continues to make contact until a response is received – freeing up busy teams from making time-consuming phone calls and ensuring parents are alerted quickly, while promoting safeguarding best practice.
Prioritising early intervention
Efficient and cost-effective in equal measure, IRIS Absence Call facilitates timely and targeted intervention without staff involvement.
Schools that utilise IRIS Absence Call improve their ability to accurately identify absences, monitor trends, and implement early interventions, with data drawn automatically from their school MIS.
Similarly, IRIS Absence Call’s flexible reporting ensures schools can filter data with speed and precision to identify the most appropriate course of action.
The broader benefits of innovative EdTech
Effectively tackling unauthorised absence, truancy, and poor punctuality are key benefits of IRIS Absence Call. However, schools that use the system notice wider advantages too.
For instance, IRIS Absence Call supports better pupil outcomes by providing all pupils with the best chance to thrive academically and emotionally via early, targeted intervention.
It also saves staff time and saves schools money, with a cost-effective platform designed with busy schools in mind.
Where parental engagement is concerned, the system helps bridge the gap between home and school, as IRIS Absence Call suits both busy and hard-to-reach parents.
Find out more about IRIS Absence Call, and market leading parental engagement platforms by IRIS Education.
