Belonging, Engaging and Participating: our response

The guidance published on Belonging, engaging and participating is a very positive contribution to the policy and practice around young people’s attendance in educational settings (both in school and other settings).

However, there are some clear and key areas where we would want to see significant changes, and where we believe opportunities have been missed.

The guidance published on Belonging, engaging and participating is a very positive contribution to the policy and practice around young people’s attendance in educational settings (both in school and other settings), and as an organisation we are pleased to see a wide variety of pressures, as well as different approaches to engaging with young people and their families and/or parental figures referenced or recommended in the guidance.

However, there are some clear and key areas where we would want to see significant changes, and where we believe opportunities have been missed to offer an even more holistic, nuanced view of the reality for young people and their parents or parental figures, particularly around mental health, poverty and other key influences on people’s attendance, or other engagement with education.

  • Our response is focused on two main themed areas that we believe need
    to be further developed:
  • Reducing shame for parents, parental figures and young people
  • Creating connection between people and communities

We have drawn out specifics, asking Welsh Government to:

  • Consider removing the use of fixed penalty notices for absences in school;
  • Consider updating the guidance on parental contracts to ensure the power imbalance is addressed;
  • Consider producing pilot exemplar “vulnerability assessments” to build a more strengths-based approach;
  • Consider updating the guidance so that the approaches suggested for emotional based school avoidance are the default approaches suggested for all absences;
  • Continue to develop the No Wrong Door approach, and to engage the third sector in the movement towards a more community–led approach;
  • Continue to develop the understanding of trauma–informed approaches across Wales, in particular looking at reducing restrictive practice across the school system.

These points are not exhaustive, and others are included in the detail, but these are our priority points.

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