What’s an Education Welfare Officer?
still, you might be appertained to an Education Welfare Officer, If there are enterprises about your child’s academy attendance. We explain their part.
School attendance is a hot content at the moment, with term- time leaves, forfeitures and court rulings capsizing them in the news nearly every day.
The occasional day( or many days) out due to illness, leaves or an important family event may not feel a big deal, but, between them, children in full- time education miss over 50 million days of academy each time.
For families whose children are generally good at attending academy, nothing is likely to be if they miss a many days over the course of the time. But where children are constantly absent from academy, a referral to the Education Welfare Officer( EWO) might be made.
What does an EWO do?
EWOs are employed by the original council to work with seminaries and families to insure that every academy age child is entering a suitable, full- time education by encouraging regular attendance at academy( or icing they are being home educated).
Every academy has a named EWO. One of their places is to visit the academy regularly and meet with the head schoolteacher or other elderly staff to bandy any pupils who are failing to attend academy regularly.
When an EWO visits a academy, they also check their registers to make sure they ’re being filled in duly and to look for patterns in children’s absences that could indicate a problem.
Outside of these regular meetings, seminaries can relate a child to the Education Welfare Service( EWS). They will make arrangements for an EWO to meet with the family and bandy their child’s attendance issues.
The Education Welfare Officer Video
Why might a family be referred to an EWO?
There are a number of reasons why a child’s attendance may fall below respectable situations, including
- Parents taking children out of academy to go on vacation
- Frequent or patient illness
- A parent’s ill health that makes it delicate to get the child to academy
- Transport problems
- Medical movables arranged in academy time
- Taking days out because the child is ‘ tired ’ or ‘ had a busy weekend ’
- Bullying or academy phobia
- Truancy
presently, the Department for Education considers a child as having ‘ patient absence ’( PA) issues if their attendance drops below 90 per cent – the fellow of missing one day every fortnight. still, there may be interventions below this threshold if fussing patterns are arising.
Why does good attendance matter?
Children who are persistently absent are affected in a number of ways. Primary- academy children who have ongoing absence issues frequently come from underprivileged backgrounds.
These children may start academy beind their peers in terms of their language and social development, and missing lots of academy makes it harder for them to catch up.
When a child is allowed to miss primary academy on a frequent base, they develop poor stations to academy. They ’re more likely to present at secondary position, and this affects their GCSE grades and their chances of chancing a job, farther education or training.
Attendance is also one of the criteria that Ofsted look at when examining seminaries, so seminaries are keen to keep perfecting their statistics.
Taking your child out of academy for a vacation may not feel unreasonable, but if they miss one day of academy each week( or the original) every time, they ’ll have lost an entire two times of training by the time they ’re 16.
What happens if you’re referred to an EWO?
originally, do n’t fear – an EWO referral will only be as a lastresort.However, they should intermediate first, and at an early stage, If the academy has enterprises about your child’s attendance or promptitude.
They ’ll try to help you find a result to the problem – for illustration, if your child is missing academy because they ’re being bullied, they might suggest some one- to- one support.
However, it’s doubtful that farther action will be taken at this stage, If you co-operate with the academy and are suitable to ameliorate your child’s attendance.
Still, they will meet with you( and conceivably your child), generally at the academy, If the academy does relate you to the EWO. This will include setting out the reasons it’s important that your child goes to academy, and making you apprehensive of your legal responsibility to make sure they do.
They might also request information from other professionals involved with you and your child, similar as social services or their GP or health caller, to make a fuller picture of what’s passing.
The EWO’s main end is to work with you to get your child to academy regularly. They ’ll put together a plan, which might include support from other agencies for illustration, if you ’re unfit to get your child to academy because you ’re ill or impaired, they may be suitable to arrange transport.
Generally, some short- term support is all that’s demanded to help families ameliorate their child’s attendance.
EWOs also work with families who are home educating, where there are enterprises that a child is n’t entering a suitable education at home.