£500K pledged to help improve school attendance, behaviour, and wellbeing

Richard Evans, Local Democracy Reporter

Council bosses have agreed to spend an extra £500,000 in a bid to tackle attendance, behaviour and wellbeing in schools.

Denbighshire cabinet members this week agreed to spend the cash, on top of the existing education budget, with a particular focus on supporting children from low-income families.

The funding will now be transferred to the education department and will be used to tackle the issues – with the council citing attendance as a priority.

Figures show that school attendance in Denbighshire is below the Welsh average.

While the national attendance rate for primary and secondary schools combined was 90.6% for 2023/24, Denbighshire recorded 89.9% – 0.7% below average.

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Barriers

The £500K boost will help address a range of barriers from poor mental health to poverty and low motivation.

The funds will be used to modernise IT systems to improve data; increase the number of family link workers; increase the number of family engagement officers, focusing on the transition from primary to secondary schools; support children in poverty; fund behaviour support in secondary schools; and appoint an assistant education psychologist to help children struggling to attend due to issues such as neurodiversity.

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Education welfare officer

Further investment will be used to fund an education welfare officer, with specialist knowledge of non-attendance leading to legal proceedings.

Head of education Geraint Davies said: “As welcome as £500K is, that will not solve every issue we have in Denbighshire regarding those four areas, but it is exceptionally welcome and I know our colleagues in schools are very grateful as well.”

The funds will be recurring in each financial year, and the cabinet voted unanimously in favour of approving the funds.