Increasing School Attendance

School attendance is becoming more and more important. But have you ever wondered why increasing school attendance is the school counselor’s job? Or how to increase school attendance for the whole school? We have answers!

Would you rather watch or listen instead of read? Check out our podcast or video podcast about this topic, too! We share a few more tips on there and a whole lot more laughs!

Why is increasing school attendance our job?

Why is this our job?  Our answer is that it’s not our job, but it is a component of our job.  Just think: if a student is chronically absent, shouldn’t we dig a little deeper to find out why?  What if it’s due to a bullying issue.  Or maybe there is a learning disability and they are feeling frustrated and defeated because they don’t understand what’s being taught.  What if there isn’t any running water?  What if they’ve been evicted?  See where I’m going with this?  While we aren’t the truancy officer, these are all issues that counselors can help with.

Look at the Data

The first thing we have done to raise our school attendance is look at the numbers from the previous year.  Pull your average daily attendance.  Do you see room for improvement?  Can you raise it even half a percentage point?  If your attendance percentage is already high, you may need to concentrate on an attendance subgroup.  For example, look at the number of students who were chronically absent last year.  Usually chronically absent means students who have 15 or more absences.  Can you work with that group to get them to have even 1 or 2 fewer absences? 

Use Every Resource

We’re talking small groups, whole groups, individual sessions.  We do a whole group lesson so that every student in the school realizes the importance of good attendance.  Then we do a small group with our chronically absent students that we mentioned earlier.  We making these fun so the students don’t even realize they’ve been “marked” for our small groups! We’ve done slime groups and lessons and sushi groups and lessons and combinations of all of these. At our level the individual sessions are done mainly with the parents.  Instead of meeting with them as a threat as in saying, “You better get your kids to school this year!” we talk to them and explain, “We noticed your child missed ___ days last year.  As a school counselor I have resources available to me that people sometimes don’t think of.  So I wanted to ask you what we can do to help with your child’s attendance this year.”  This has opened the door to learn about evictions, job loss, terminal illnesses, etc. 

Practical School Attendance Ideas

• Bulletin Boards– Bulletin boards are a great way to increase attendance by sharing information and encouraging positive peer pressure.  Students see which classrooms had the highest attendance and start putting that positive pressure on their friends to be at school. 

Kim did this bulletin board last year based on a slime theme.  If you didn’t know, slime is still HUGE among students.  Kim would place a slime splat outside the classroom that had the highest attendance the week before. 

My (Laura) school had a superhero theme, so I made a superhero that represented the teachers at our school.  Each week they would “fly” across the bulletin board to indicate which homeroom had the highest attendance.

• Video on Social Media- I recorded a video each week to let the students and teachers know which homeroom had the highest attendance.  I would post it to our school’s facebook page.  Parents and community members got interested and started asking, “Which homeroom had the highest attendance this week?!”  I occasionally invited students to join me in the videos.  I discovered hidden talents in our students that I never knew about!  One of my students is a ventriloquist!  I never would have known that!

• Surprise check-in- Have some kind of a reward, maybe  a box of donuts, or even a coloring sheet that allows the students to take a brain break for 5 minutes.  If the class has 100% attendance, give them the coloring sheet reward.  You could also use donuts, bubble gum, etc.
• Attendance punch card- Each year we laminate a card with 10 superheroes, hot air balloons, or whatever our theme for the year is. Each day the class has 100% attendance, the teacher marks off one of the balloons. When the punch card is full, they send it to the office for some type of prize. Maybe a homework pass or candy.

Low or No-Cost Reward Ideas

• Extra Recess
• Game time in your office/classroom
• Bring in a PTO parent to do an art project
• Play time at the local park
• Allow students to make a Youtube video about the importance of attendance. They can share the video with other classes.
• Pizza Party
• Slushies
• Ice Cream party

We hope this helps you reach your attendance goals!  Depending on when you’re reading this, you may use some of these ideas and start thinking about your goals for the upcoming year, too.  What do you do that has increased your school attendance?  We would love to learn tips from you, too