Attendance Officer

Education, Skills & Early Years

Inclusion Service

Attendance Officer

**Ref**:000807

**Contract**:Permanent

**Salary**: £30,559 - £33,366 per annum (Grade 5)

**Hours**: 36.66 per week

**Based**: Spindles Shopping Centre, West Street, Oldham

**Closing Date**: Thursday 12th June 2025

**Shortlisting & Interview Dates**: TBC

**Role Overview**:

- To ensure that all children of compulsory school age are admitted to school and attend regularly or receive education otherwise.
- To contribute to raising achievement by improving school attendance.
- To provide specialist support to assist the Local Authority meeting its statutory obligations and targets in relation to school attendance using legal sanctions if necessary.

**Key Responsibilities**:

- To ensure that parents are made fully aware of their statutory responsibilities and to act on behalf of the Local Authority in carrying out the provisions of relevant legislation.
- To make unsupervised contact with families in their own homes and elsewhere to assess the reasons impacting on the attendance of individual pupils, facilitating their return or access to regular full-time education provision.
- To establish the reasons for non-attendance, make assessments and agree a plan for facilitating a return to school using appropriate strategies with specified timescales.
- To support in the ascertaining the whereabouts of children referred to the team, engaging hard to reach families with the education admission process and where required, initiating legal interventions.

**Key Requirements**:

- Recent and relevant experience of direct work with children, young people, parents and families preferably within an educational context.
- To acquire and maintain a working knowledge of the statutory framework relating to school attendance, child protection and special educational needs and disabilities in order to be able to offer informed advice to parents, head teachers, governors and others.
- To support School Attendance Officers and senior managers in advising schools on all matters relating to school attendance and where necessary take a lead role in developing work processes to improve school attendance. To be able to manage and prioritise personal workload in line with service requirements and Oldham standards preparing for supervision by the line manager and to participate in training as identified for personal and service development.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and therefore expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

**About Us**:
We want Oldham to have vibrant, safe neighbourhoods where people are proud to live with opportunities for healthier, more fulfilled lives; and a sustainable, thriving economy. As we look to the future, the challenges may be significant, but so are the opportunities. We’ve identified three missions with our residents and partners, focusing on what will deliver the biggest impact:
A Great Place to Live, Healthier, Happier Lives, and Green and Growing.

**Our Values and Behaviours**:
By driving innovation, investing in our people, and championing our communities, we will ensure that Oldham continues to be a place where everyone can live their best life. To support this, we have three core values which define who we are and how we operate. These are ‘Proud, Ambitious, and Together’, and they shape our culture, inform our decisions, and inspire us to deliver on our commitments to the people of Oldham.

We have translated these values into five behaviours which guide our actions and are the standards we hold ourselves to, day in and day out:

- Work with a resident focus
- Support local leaders
- Committed to the borough
- Delivery high performance
- Take ownership and drive change

You can find out more about our values and behaviours on our greater.jobs Oldham page

**Our Benefits Package**:
At Oldham Council we offer a great benefits package for our employees, which includes the following:

- 25 days annual leave which increases after 5 and 10-years’ service
- The option to purchase additional annual leave.
- An attractive LGPS benefit pension scheme with the option to make shared cost additional voluntary contributions.
- Discounted gym membership with Oldham Active.
- Staff discount scheme for shopping, entertainment, eating-out, eating-in, travel, motoring and more.
- Salary sacrifice scheme for home and electronics and Cycle to Work.
- Wellbeing support, including a Mental Health First Aider network and an Employment Assistance Programme that provides 24 hours access to advice and support.
- Staff recognition and celebration events.
- Peer support groups

**Inclusive Recruitment**:
We work closely with employees to help them work at their best, including making adjustments such as flexible working, describing available working patterns, providing equipment or making changes to the workplace.

If you’re an applicant with disabilitie