The short answers
What is a senior attendance champion?
The senior leader with overall responsibility for championing and improving attendance in a school, and for working with pupils, parents and other services where that is needed. The DfE's statutory guidance, Working together to improve school attendance, expects every school to have one on its leadership team.
What does an attendance champion do?
Under the DfE's guidance, the senior attendance champion sets a clear vision for good attendance, puts effective systems for tackling absence in place and makes sure all staff follow them, has a strong grasp of the school's absence data so the whole school's effort goes where it is needed, and regularly checks whether the school's strategies are working. They usually lead the more formal conversations with a family when support has not yet made a difference.
Does every school need a senior attendance champion?
Yes. The guidance expects every school to have a designated senior leader in the role, and the school's attendance policy has to give their name and contact details, so a parent knows who leads attendance.
Is the attendance champion the same as the attendance officer?
Not usually. The champion is a senior leader who owns the strategy and the data. An attendance officer, or pastoral or family support staff, does much of the day to day work: first-day calls, following up absence and working with families. The attendance policy names both.
What the champion needs to see each week
A strong grasp of absence data does not mean more spreadsheets. It means knowing, each week, which children need the school's attention and whether what the school is doing is working.
Who has started to slip
Pupils dropping below the school's target, while there is still time for a call home to change the outcome, and pupils above 90% but heading for persistent absence.
Who has come back up
Pupils who were below target and have now stayed above it, so the school knows what is working and the family hears that it is.
Where the patterns are
A weekday, a session or a year group standing out, which usually points at something the school can change before it points at a family.
Who is getting close to the penalty notice threshold
Counted over the exact ten school weeks, so support is offered long before a fine is ever discussed.
Whether the gaps are closing
Pupils eligible for free school meals, with SEND and with English as an additional language, each against the same group nationally.
What to tell governors
The school against the national average and against the same point last year, in a report that is already written.
Where this comes from
Working together to improve school attendance, the DfE's statutory guidance, 2026 edition, which sets out the role, the school's attendance policy and the stages of support. See also improving attendance in schools, the ten-week duty and school attendance codes.
Everything the champion needs, each week
adsum turns the exports your MIS already produces into the views above: who needs support, who has recovered, where the patterns are, who is close to the threshold, and how each group compares with England. The governors' and inspection reports are written for you.
Or ask us for a trial on your own school's data.