£500K pledged to help improve school attendance, behaviour, and wellbeing

Richard Evans, Local Democracy Reporter

Council bosses have agreed to spend an extra £500,000 in a bid to tackle attendance, behaviour and wellbeing in schools.

Denbighshire cabinet members this week agreed to spend the cash, on top of the existing education budget, with a particular focus on supporting children from low-income families.

The funding will now be transferred to the education department and will be used to tackle the issues – with the council citing attendance as a priority.

Figures show that school attendance in Denbighshire is below the Welsh average.

While the national attendance rate for primary and secondary schools combined was 90.6% for 2023/24, Denbighshire recorded 89.9% – 0.7% below average.

Barriers

The £500K boost will help address a range of barriers from poor mental health to poverty and low motivation.

The funds will be used to modernise IT systems to improve data; increase the number of family link workers; increase the number of family engagement officers, focusing on the transition from primary to secondary schools; support children in poverty; fund behaviour support in secondary schools; and appoint an assistant education psychologist to help children struggling to attend due to issues such as neurodiversity.

Education welfare officer

Further investment will be used to fund an education welfare officer, with specialist knowledge of non-attendance leading to legal proceedings.

Head of education Geraint Davies said: “As welcome as £500K is, that will not solve every issue we have in Denbighshire regarding those four areas, but it is exceptionally welcome and I know our colleagues in schools are very grateful as well.”

The funds will be recurring in each financial year, and the cabinet voted unanimously in favour of approving the funds.