Local authorities have an obligation to challenge every school to
do the best for their local population, ensuring regular engagement
with, and attendance at school is an integral part of the local
authority role. This involves collecting large amounts of attendance
data regularly from schools and placing it into a central database
for further analysis.
ADA eliminates the complexity in managing large amounts of attendance
data held by Local Authorities. Simplifying this process gives staff
more time to work with strategies to improve attendance in under
performing schools.
Identify areas of concern
The way ADA presents data assists staff in pinpointing attendance issues; or revealing areas of concern very quickly. Seeing the contrast between groups or individuals clearly shows the variations in performance.
Direct your action
Having identified areas of concern direct your actions on attendance decisively towards the
most appropriate schools, pupils, families, staff and curriculum areas.
Set benchmarks targets
Each student can be given their own personal target, or targets can also be set for groups, including groups of schools.
Targets can set against several attendance criteria which can range from simple percentages to broken weeks or half day absences
Monitor performance
Regularly check on your targets and immediately see how the students, groups, or schools are progressing, giving you the chance to implement timely remedial action where required.
Saves time in data analysis
The lengthy analysis process is condensed into a series of easy to understand graphs and charts. This method of pinpointing attendance issues; or revealing areas of concern is very quick. This simplification of the attendance process enables staff to be more effective and benefits authorities by saving both time and money.
ADA helps Local Authorities to improve and maintain attendance in Secondary and Primary Schools.
By simplifying this process and creating charts to compare schools, groups or individual pupils with others on the same graph. You can also undertake in depth analysis of attendance and absence, making ADA a very powerful tool.
Comparing your data in this way enables you to see the contrast between schools, groups or individuals. This visual reporting makes it ideal to share with parents, staff and pupils as they can see the comparisons made and see how they are performing against other cohorts or groups.
Reporting in this way allows LAs to share this information and their achievements with Senior Management in schools, Local Authority Members and Ofsted Inspectors.
Personal targets
Having identified individual Schools, pupils or groups of pupils with particular attendance problems, you can build a corrective action plan combined with appropriate targets and achievement dates, as required. Each student can be given their own personal targets; these can also be set for each school, groups, or individual pupils. Targets can range from simple percentages to broken weeks and half day absences.
MIS data
Data can be automatically retrieved from schools using the SIMS MIS by using the ADA data extractor and delivered to the LA via an intranet, email or other secure transmission method.
An automated Group Call extractor works with all the popular MIS systems including Capita SIMS, SERCO, RM and Phoenix. The school's attendance data is collected in a known format so that it can be imported directly into ADA.
Use offline
Where there is no network access the software can be used off line, enabling staff to work anywhere and at any time, with teachers, parents and pupils at school, or with parents and pupils in their own homes.
What if?
Create your own attendance scenarios for 'what if' situations you are able to remove selected schools or groups, or a pupil from a group, the aim being to see the effect they have on the total. You can select a week and remove it and see the difference that snow or flu week had on the total. “What if” modelling calculates the real difference a week, a school or a pupil has on your overall attendance figures.
Ofsted
The staff at school are expected to have a working knowledge of attendance patterns, how these vary across various groups of pupils within school. As part of the inspection process they need to be able to demonstrate how they are alerted to changes in pupil attendance, whatever the cause.
ADA supports attendance management by providing a system to monitor and report any variation in performance. To assist LA's with their obligation to challenge every school, to do the best for their local population.
Performance variation
It is important for LAs to know whether their schools attendance is improving or deteriorating. ADA will report on this across any two comparison periods of time. This simple way of monitoring variances will indicate which schools or pupils are improving and which are not. You can monitor against any chosen benchmarks or target criteria such as national, LA targets or schools of a similar nature.
Targeting Resources
Having identified these areas of underperformance and knowing the effects these are having on the overall attendance figures, you can direct with confidence your resources and actions towards the most appropriate schools, pupils, families, staff and curriculum areas. In order to maximise any potential gains in attendance performance.
Historical data
Progress on the actual school attendance to date can be viewed, either year on year, by term or compared for any selected period within a year. Compare previous years, analyse absence trends or code usage over time, review strategies, compare on going performance and measure progress in overall attendance.
Pupil search
You can search the attendance database using the Pupil search filter i.e. you can find all the Smiths for instance. By using any of the pupil’s characteristics for example name, attendance code, pupil’s post code or for pupils who have gone off roll in the LA. You can also identify persistent absentees by setting the current percentage absence target figure.
User defined groups
You can set up any user required groups, creating groups for example, Small Primary schools, geographic school groupings, Underperforming schools, schools in special measures. Or groups you have identified as requiring further attention, in fact you can include any group you wish.
Case Studies
If you would like to discuss out products directly with any of the schools involved in the case studies, please contact us initially and we will be happy to contact the relevant member of staff, before passing on their contact details.
Solihull Childrens' Services
"Our strategic partnership with TASC means we have systems that can be tailored to access the information we need quickly and easily. We have implemented their products across the authority."
Steve Martin, LADO
FAQs
Here are a selection of the questions we are most
commonly asked about ADA...
How do I get attendance data from schools and into ADA?
Data can be automatically retrieved from schools using the SIMS MIS by using the ADA data extractor and delivered to the LA via an intranet, email or other secure transmission method. An automated Group Call extractor works with all the popular MIS systems including Capita SIMS, SERCO, RM and Phoenix.
Can the data extracted from schools be imported directly into the ADA database?
Yes this extracted data can be input directly into ADA using the input routines in ADA manager.
Can we combine schools into groups that we define locally?
Yes, you can define your own groups by geographical element, school tier, or any other criteria.
Can we find pupils with a specific attendance code across the authority, for example not on roll in the authority?
The pupil search facility can identify the pupils having a selected code.
