Attendance Matters Every Day

If you need any support around your child's attendance, please speak to your school.

The "Attendance Matters Every Day" campaign aims to tackle the decline in school attendance rates across the city, primarily in the primary sector, by highlighting the critical importance of regular attendance for your child's future.

• Going to school every day opens doors to better opportunities in the future.
• Going to school every day helps children develop essential life skills.
• Going to school every day fosters friendships that can last a lifetime.

The campaign also seeks to increase engagement with any parents or carers that need support in getting their child to school every day. 

Executive Director of Education, Douglas Hutchison introduces the campaign below:

Why are we doing this campaign?

This comes at a time where school attendance rates in the city, and indeed nationally, are on a worrying downward trend post-pandemic:

• In 2013/14, primary school attendance was at 94%, but, by 2023/24, it had dropped to 90.4% and the lowest in years.
• Over a third of Glasgow's primary pupils missed more than 10% of school last year, equating to 13,721 children each missing nearly a month (19 days) of learning .
• A staggering 738,625 school days were lost to absence in 2022/23 across primary schools.

Recent research shows that even a few missed days here and there, can add up and impact a child's holistic development and future prospects, and any time missed is almost impossible to recover from.

The Attendance Matters Every Day campaign

The "Attendance Matters Every Day" campaign aims to highlight the problem of poor attendance rates and encourage our parents and carers to send their children to school every single day by spotlighting the benefits of regular attendance for their child's future.

Crucially, we also want to increase levels of parental engagement from those that need support in getting their child to school each day. 

The campaign will be run over a six week period via radio, social media and through our schools to raise awareness with our families, children and young people.

You can listen to our radio ad here:

While we are making unauthorised attendance rates a priority for this year, this campaign aims to complement the extensive work going on already within our schools to tackle and offer support around the underlying problems that affect absence including, additional support needs, mental health and poverty.

This is the first phase of a longer-term campaign that will go on to look at Secondary school attendance rates later in the year.

Further support

If you are a parent/carer who is having difficulty getting your child to school everyday, here are some helpful links:

• www.parentclub.scot
• www.parentclub.scot/topics/school-education
• www.parentclub.scot/topics/behaviour
• www.parentclub.scot/topics/mental-health-wellbeing

Research 

Studies consistently show the detrimental effect of school absences on pupils' achievement. This campaign is based on research and studies carried out by the University of Strathclyde. 

You can read more about this here. 

Reporting Pupil Absence

If your child is sick or has a medical or dental appointment, you can report it here via our online form. 

Please note that you can also make a request by phoning 0141 471 3710 or 0141 287 0039 and providing the details requested by the operator. The operator will then make sure the information is passed on to your child's school.

If your child attends an additional support for learning school or a Glasgow nursery then you should continue to phone your child's school/ nursery directly to report the absence.

For more information on reporting absence, please visit our Pupil Absence webpage.