state school attendance strategy

BC: Tom, in a nutshell, what did the WA attendance project involve? 

TA: dandolo was commissioned by the WA department of education to develop a school attendance strategy with a focus on remote and disadvantaged schools. The department wanted to bring together agencies across government to take a collaborative and holistic approach to address the challenges of school attendance. They recognised that there are a variety of factors influencing school attendance both inside and outside of the ‘school gate’, particularly in remote and disadvantaged communities. In that context we had to develop a strategy, but we also had to bring other agencies who were part of a working group ‘along for the ride’ and get them to buy into that collaborative holistic approach. 

BC: Why do you think dandolo was the right fit for this project and what made dandolo’s approach unique? 

TA: Firstly, we were able to cut through the noise and produce a concise strategy for a really complex issue. When we talk about school attendance and, people often use the term ‘wicked’ problem or at the very least a very complex and hard policy challenge to overcome. dandolo was the right fit given our expertise at processing huge amounts of data and viewpoints, and distilling it down to a practical strategy that can actually work in practise.  

Secondly, our ability to consult widely and meaningfully. dandolo has a lot of experience in engaging with a variety of different stakeholders and we were well placed to consult with, not just high level system stakeholders like government agencies but also consultations on the ground in communities to make sure that we heard their perspectives as well. 

BC: As you said, when operating in remote communities and attempting to tackle cycles of disadvantage you’re working with ‘wicked’ problems. I think this is reflected in the cross-agency nature of dandolo’s approach, how did collaborating with multiple government agencies at different levels impact the project? 

TA: I think it made the project harder, but I think it produced it better outcome and a better result. Harder in the sense that we had to consult more and do more work to get an understanding of the experiences and positions of different government agencies. For example, we talked to the police, and they provided insight from a particular perspective which were completely different from when we talked to Department of Health. It was much harder to produce a strategy in that way but what it meant is that the strategy we did produce considered all of those perspectives and was more of a whole of government strategy rather than just, for example, a Department of Education strategy. 

BC: Was there a roadblock or conceptual challenge that you encountered and how did you go address it? 

TA: The first challenge was this ‘chicken and egg’ problem in education where people talk about school attendance, but they also talk about school engagement. Kids won’t come to school unless they are engaged at school. The problem is, if kids already aren’t attending school there’s no way that they can get into the classroom to engage in the first place. There's often this debate in education: should you develop an attendance strategy and try and get kids back to school? or should you be designing an engagement strategy of which attendance is one of the outcomes? That's something we grappled with throughout the project. The conclusion we came to is that because we were designing a strategy for remote and disadvantaged communities’, nonattendance was already very high; the priority was to get kids through the school gate and back into classrooms and engage them in that way. With the acknowledgment that unless engagement within the classroom improved that was never going to be a sustainable solution.  

Secondly, the ultimate strategy we developed focuses on community led approaches to improving school attendance, this was the number one thing we heard from our consultations. You need to take a community led approach that's appropriate for that particular community, their aspirations, and their circumstances. However, this meant our strategy didn’t outline incredibly specific or discrete actions in it. That's one of the trade-offs, you can take a top-down approach and dictate to schools and communities what they need to do to improve attendance, which probably looks better from the outside. Or you can take more of a bottom-up approach which is what dandolo did. Our approach empowers communities to take the reins and puts mechanisms in place to support them to do that, creating impactful and sustainable change. Politically, it’s a riskier approach as it cedes power and influence to those communities but ultimately evidence suggests, and I believe, it was the right approach. 

BC: With such a complex and ongoing problem how was data incorporated into the process? 

TA: We took a very data driven approach, we worked with the Telethon Kids Institute who have a lot of experience and data in this particular area. We were very much guided by what the data was telling us. We also attempted to build in more about data driven approaches for the future, to support communities to identify the areas of need and what would be the most successful interventions.  

There is infinite amounts of data on school attendance and outcomes, but the problem we had to overcome is that the people on the ground in the school communities don’t know how to use it. A big part of our solution was building the capability of people on the ground to use and understand data in a way that can complement decision making. Community leaders often have the best sense of what is going on and what the best solutions would be for their schools, our aim was to empower them to use data to complement their views and make them more nuanced to allow for better interventions. Without the effective use of data, there are interventions that are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what's going on, and that also means success is hard to measure. Without embedding data into the process, ineffective interventions can get perpetuated or get thrown out without ever knowing whether they worked. So, supporting communities to measure success with data was an important part of our project. 

BC: What makes this project iconic to dandolo / why are you proud to have worked on it?

TA: I'm proud that we were able to work on and provide advice on a project that has real impact on the lives of, often very vulnerable children and communities. I'm also proud that the solutions and ideas that we recommend were courageous solutions. They endorsed a community led approach and listened to the voices of the communities and stakeholders that we spoke to, to empower them to do what's needed to boost attendance and ultimately education outcomes in their own communities. Experience tells us that often the only way to improve outcomes in remote communities is by empowering those communities to take charge and develop and implement their own strategies.  

I was proud that we were able to push the department and push government agencies to agree to a strategy that is ultimately very practical and a strategy that holds them accountable to work together to help communities to improve attendance. School attendance has been an issue for a long time and many jurisdictions and agencies have attempted to address the problem, but it's persisted. I'm proud that we were able to cut through a lot of the noise and cut through a lot of the complexity to recommend some things that are highly practical. We were very aware that we didn't want to recommend the same old solutions, we wanted to break the wheel and actually suggest things that were more likely to work and not to be more of the same as what has come before.