The Opportunity

Walsall is a historic industrial hub in the Black Country, traditionally world-renowned for its leather craftsmanship and today driving a major modern economic regeneration through advanced manufacturing, precision engineering, and logistics. We are seeking a proactive, highly organized, and analytical Attendance Officer to join an innovative studio school. In this critical operational role, you will manage, monitor, and optimize student attendance across the school, identifying trends, removing barriers to education, and working collaboratively with families to ensure every young person maximizes their academic potential.

The School

Operating as an innovative studio school, our institution redefines secondary education for 14 to 19-year-olds by combining mainstream academic qualifications with rigorous, project-based vocational pathways. Working closely with prominent regional employers, we cultivate a professional, workplace-simulated environment. We implement clear, mature, school-wide behaviour expectations that mirror a modern corporate office—ensuring our campus remains calm, purposeful, and highly focused. We treat our support and operations teams as elite professional partners, giving you the trust, independence, and technical resources needed to manage our attendance frameworks effectively.

The Attendance Team & Interventional Culture

• You will join a highly focused, modern Operations and Pastoral team where statistical precision, structural integrity, and digital efficiency are championed.

• The department utilizes industry-standard Management Information Systems (MIS), integrated messaging platforms, and advanced data visualization software to track daily attendance in real time.

• Our administrative framework explicitly prioritizes early, supportive intervention—ensuring that persistent absence trends are flagged and addressed before they impact academic performance or vocational placements.

• Staff benefit from clear operating protocols and collaborative links with internal pastoral teams and external welfare agencies, allowing you to manage complex caseloads smoothly and sustainably.

Core Responsibilities

1. Daily Attendance Monitoring: Managing the morning and afternoon registration processes, ensuring all statutory registers are completed accurately, and processing daily "first-day calling" alerts for unexplained absences.

2. Data Analysis & Trend Tracking: Utilizing the school’s internal MIS to produce granular weekly and monthly attendance reports, highlighting patterns, vulnerabilities, and tracking specific target cohorts.

3. Parental Engagement & Interventions: Contacting families to discuss absence concerns, conducting home visits where necessary, and leading formal attendance panels to build collaborative action plans.

4. Statutory Compliance & Legal Casework: Maintaining meticulous case notes and evidence timelines, preparing documentation for local authority reviews, and initiating formal legal processes or penalty notices when necessary.

5. Rewarding & Promoting Attendance: Developing and implementing creative, school-wide positive attendance initiatives and reward systems to celebrate high and improved attendance across all year groups.

The Successful Candidate We are looking for a resilient, highly organized professional who loves analysing data structures and possesses the exceptional interpersonal skills required to manage sensitive conversations with empathy and firmness. Your profile should include:

• Proven Education Experience: Strong previous experience working within an educational or social-care setting, with specific experience in attendance management, student records, or pastoral support.

• Technical Literacy: Exceptional capability with spreadsheet applications (including advanced Excel formulas, pivot tables, and data sorting) and direct experience operating school MIS platforms (such as SIMS, Arbor, or Bromcom).

• Exceptional Communication Skills: A calm, professional, and empathetic manner, with the ability to build trust with challenging families while maintaining a firm stance on statutory educational requirements.

• Meticulous Record Keeping: An uncompromising approach to data security, GDPR compliance, and accuracy, with the ability to maintain precise chronological logs under tight reporting timelines.

Why Join Our Operations Team?

• The unique professional satisfaction of working within a tech-forward studio school where your intervention directly helps young people stay engaged with their future career pathways.

• Continuous professional development (CPD) focusing on advanced legal attendance frameworks, multi-agency safeguarding protocols, and pathways into strategic school operations.

• The exceptional lifestyle benefits of living and working in Walsall—offering highly affordable housing, historic local parks, excellent new shopping developments, and superb transport links providing rapid access into central Birmingham and across the West Midlands.

• A supportive senior leadership team that respects operational autonomy, protects work-life balance, and deeply values the role attendance support plays in overall school improvement.

How to Apply

Please submit your current CV to begin the application process