Extra funding to help boost school attendance

The Welsh Government will allocate £8.8m over the next two years help increase school engagement and attendance.

The new funding includes £1.5m to provide greater capacity for Family Engagement Officers who play a key role in boosting engagement with learners and their families.

Positive relationship

FEOs are employed by schools to help foster a positive relationship between schools and families.

Through offering support and guidance, they work to improve attendance by understanding the factors that may be preventing the child from wanting to attend school and working with families to tackle these.

The Welsh Government has already invested £6.5m this year to support around 200 FEO posts, and this will be built upon in the next financial year. Over the last year school attendance has increased by 0.5%.

Root causes

Cabinet Secretary for Education, Lynne Neagle said: “Improving attendance is one of my top priorities. I am happy to see that attendance has improved, but more work needs to be done to tackle the underlying issues causing absenteeism.

“This is why I am so proud to announce additional funding to recruit and train more FEOs this financial year.

“I will build on this valuable support further with additional funding in the next financial year to ensure we can increase and retain these roles.

“Family Engagement Officers are vital in facilitating a relationship between families and schools and in doing so help tackle the root causes of absenteeism.

“Their work has already had high levels of success, and I look forwarding to seeing the continued improvement for our learners.”