This rapid evidence assessment from E4L’s UK partners at the Education Endowment Foundation examines the existing research on interventions that aim to improve students’ school attendance and the characteristics of these interventions, based on a systematic search of existing literature.

The review encompassed a search of impact evaluations published since 2000 that evaluated an intervention with a primary goal of increasing school attendance and that reported on a measure of pupil attendance or absenteeism.

The report summarises the findings from 72 studies and covers 8 topics:

• Mentoring
• Parental engagement
• Responsive and targeted approaches
• Teaching of social and emotional skills
• Behaviour interventions
• Meal provision
• Incentives and disincentives
• Extracurricular activities

Key findings and implications include:

• There is large variation in the strategies that have been researched with the aim of improving student attendance
• The overall quality of evidence is weak, and more research is required
• There is some evidence of promise for several strategies including parental engagement approaches and responsive interventions that target the individual causes of low attendance
• Many of the interventions did not have sufficient evidence to reach a conclusion on effectiveness