Education welfare service
Under Education Law parents are responsible for ensuring that their registered children of compulsory school age (5 to 16) attend school regularly. LEAs have a duty to ensure that parents undertake this responsibility. This duty is usually carried out by Education Welfare Officers (sometimes known as Education Social Workers).
Education Welfare Officers will work closely with schools and families to resolve attendance issues, arranging school and home visits as necessary.
In enforcing attendance, Education Welfare Officers have a variety of powers to help them ensure that children are properly educated.
Referring a case to the Education Welfare Service
There is much that school staff can, and should, do before involving the Education Welfare Service in an attendance case. Normally Education Welfare Officers will look for evidence that the school itself has made an effort to address the non-attendance through:
- action by the class or form tutor, as part of their day-to-day duties
- involvement of others within the school, e.g. head of year, head teacher or deputy head
- contact with parents.
The precise point at which school staff should refer a case to the Education Welfare Service will be laid out by the LEA in their Behaviour Support Plan. In general, formal referral should take place if:
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a pattern of irregular attendance is either continuing or worsening
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parents do not accept their responsibilities for ensuring the child attends schools and are refusing to discuss ways of improving attendance with the school
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condoned, unjustified absence is increasingly a problem, or the parents ask for excessive authorised absence.
Other duties
Though enforcing school attendance is the main responsibility of the Education Welfare Service, in many instances they will also undertake other important related duties. These include:
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regulating child employment
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advising on child protection issues
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helping to arrange alternative educational provision for excluded pupils
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preparing reports on pupils with special educational needs as part of the statementing process.
