Attendance Action Plan
Whether as a student or an employee it is a standard policy to keep a record and keep track of an individual’s attendance. Why, you ask? As a student it is your responsibility to show up in class to in order to learn new things, interact with your peers, experience things firsthand, and so on. Students need to attend school daily in order to succeed; grades aside, school will expose you to a lot of circumstances that will test and strengthen your personality and intelligence.
With that in mind, there is a direct correlation of the knowledge, experience, and even monetary compensation you earn with the your daily attendance. Some institutions and company do not take absenteeism lightly, some even resort to having you removed from the class or have you fired from the company. Although going to school or work daily can be tiring, there are more benefits to it than not going at all. It can help you learn or earn more, and even help you explore your preferences and become a better version of yourself.
Importance of Attendance
Attendance has been defined as “the action or state of going regularly to or being present at a place or event.” In this sense, this is the act of an individual regularly attending class or clocking it at work. Even when you attend sanctioned events, you are still obligated to have your attendance checked. However, why is it so important?
As mentioned earlier, your attendance will determine the amount of work you put in a day. It makes your effort have a measurable nature. For example, your attendance in class will give your teacher a measurable output for your grade; it usually comes in the form of quiz scores, participation grading, etc. On the other hand, when you are an employee of a company or organization, the hours you spend at work are all compensated through your salary. Since companies usually base your salary on the hours you are clocked in at work, your attendance will give them the chance to take into account your hours as well as your productivity.
Aside from external gain, being regularly active and present in your daily responsibilities will help your learn more. Reading about certain topics is merely an activity where you can learn about things; however, when there is an application of that knowledge in actuality, you will be able to absorb and fully understand what the topic truly means. With that in mind, you can accurately apply your knowledge only when you are in the right environment and with the appropriate supervision that you will need. Although there is a more efficient method of researching about the processes you find hard, it is always better to hear from someone who has more knowledge and has experience doing the process firsthand.
Thus, the teachers or managers, supervisors, etc., you have at school or work are entirely dedicated to make you understand what you ought to do easily and efficiently. This is one of the reasons why attendance is important; you can only learn so much through reading, but with proper application of that knowledge into actuality, you can learn even more. Being consistently absent will only discourage you since you have already missed out on a lot of things. Being regularly present during times when you need to be will inspire you to learn and experience things even more firsthand.
Attendance Improvement Action Plan Example
Supporting School Attendance Action Plan Example
Attendance Action Plan Example
What Is an Attendance Action Plan?
Although having a perfect attendance has more benefits than its opposite, there will always be instances when an individual simply does not care. If that is the case, as the person in charge in handling such circumstances, you need to have an effective intervention. You need to figure out what you should do in order to encourage your student to always come in daily and on time. In order to do that effectively you need a concrete plan that will contain the strategies you want to apply.
With that said, an attendance action plan is a detailed outline containing the actions needed to be taken to improve the attendance of student/s. An attendance action plan will help you apply tactics that can encourage and inspire the people you are currently handling to show up when they ought to. This means that an attendance action plan will include not only strategies and tactics, it will also include the procedures on how to apply them as well as other relevant information about it.
Simply put, it is a document that contains organized strategies that will help you take charge in achieving more numbers in attendance be it for school, work, or events. More than that, the attendance action plan will help you build better relationship with the people under your supervision since it can greatly affect their enthusiasm to show up when they need to be.
Attendance Action Plan Template Example
Primary School Attendance Action Plan Example
College Attendance Action Plan Example
How to Improve Attendance in School
As mentioned earlier, having a perfect attendance in school will help you learn more. Not only that, it can also help maximize a student’s potential. Being active in school will help the student explore his/her skills, find his/her purpose, and maybe even understand himself/herself even more. More than that, consistently being in school will help student build meaningful relationships with the people he/she interacts with on the daily. Therefore, it is important to manage a student’s absenteeism tendency while it’s still its earliest stage.
Studies have revealed that a student’s absenteeism has a strong link to a these outcomes: early school leaving, poverty, substance use, unemployment, and negative health outcomes. Thus, it is very important to encourage students to always be present in school and to be on time. With that said, here are some ways you can improve student attendance:
1. Convey your passion about teaching and learning
One of the easiest ways to encourage your students to show up to class regularly is through showing your passion when it comes to the subjects that you teach. More importantly, show your students that you are passionate in helping them understand the lessons that you teach. Expressing this through both actions and words, your students will see your strategy in a positive light. This will greatly affect their enthusiasm to attend school daily since they can see your interest in the subject and your dedication to helping them learn more about the subject.
2. Show students they are important to you
It is important to build productive relationships with students individually. The effort you exert for your student to understand what you have taught and beyond that will not be forsaken since they are more likely to remember what you made them feel than what you did for them. Make them feel important, accepted, and cared for. Show interest in them outside the classroom, ask about the situation at home, genuinely empathize with them. However, it is important to put a boundary between applauding what they do good and excusing their bad behavior.
3. Challenge students to excel
When a student has displayed a lost in interest about school, it is important to take action immediately. Displaying a “that’s just the way these students are” attitude will only make it worse. Every child is capable of academic learning and succeeding at school. You should make this belief known to the students and then challenge them to do better. It is important to raise your standards with what your students to achieve in order for them to develop determination and passion in doing well.
4. Encourage extracurricular participation
It has been shown in studies that schools with high rates of participation in school-based extracurricular activities have significantly lower rates of student absenteeism than other schools. Thus, it is important for the student to feel connected to the school. Encouraging them to participate in extracurricular activities will help them build a solid foundation of school pride and also help them establish meaningful relationships with their peers. Through extracurricular activities like sports and community service, they will be more interested to be in school regularly.
5. Adopt social-emotional learning process
Personal and interpersonal issues greatly affect a student’s tendency to have chronic absences. Some have lost hope of becoming better and some don’t have the self-confidence that they need. Studies have shown an increase in attendance in schools that adopted social-emotional training program. This means that a social-emotional program will help boost the students’ morale and help them have the confidence to believe in their abilities and to help them make a connection with their peers, and more.
6. Implement behavior support programs
B. F. Skinner was one of the people who pioneered behavior support programs based on behavioral psychology. Although they are a bit old-fashioned, studies reveal that it is still one of the most effective ways to increase school attendance. With that in mind, implementing a behavior support program starts by setting an explicit attendance goal and explaining why that goal is important. If the student is able to maintain good attendance, the teacher gives a reward and sanctioned when they are absent without an appropriate reason.
7. Use adventure programs
Utilizing an adventure program and exposing students to experiential challenges like rock climbing, rafting, and team building games will strengthen their logical skills especially since the activities are goal-oriented. These programs will include specific goals and structured preparation in order to achieve the goals. And the facilitators will give students individual feedback to help them push through personal challenges and achieve their goal.
8. Refine classroom management
Although the other strategies may be useful in increasing student attendance and student achievement, you should be able to incorporate an effective classroom management to balance it all out. With that, you need to refine your classroom management by starting with recognizing and praising industrious behavior. You also need to stop negative behaviors while in its earliest stages through positive correction, redirection, and warnings. But most importantly, you need to be aware of the good things you need to commend and correct the minor misbehavior.
9. Improve your teaching
There is a direct correlation to a student’s interest in coming to school and how you teach them. Students are more likely to have perfect attendance if they are succeeding with their goals, and they succeed if you teach them well. With this in mind, you have to teach students to genuinely understand and master the materials they are meant to learn. To do so, you can implement evidence-based teaching strategies and make sure everything you do is based on sufficient evidence. Or you can apply another principle called adjunct questioning where you question students about their understanding about a topic before proceeding to the next.
10. Ask for parents’ involvement
Parents involvement in a student’s academic life will greatly affect his/her outcome. As parents to be involved with the student’s needs for school, ask them to encourage the child to always be in school, etc. Therefore, you must be able to explain the importance of education to the parents in order for them to take interest in the student’s performance in school.
Improving Attendance Action Plan Example
Catholic Primary School Attendance Action Plan Example
Attendance Action Plan Form Example
Infant and Nursery School Attendance Action Plan Example
We hope you have learned valuable information about attendance, its importance, how an attendance action plan can help improve an institution’s attendance rate, and so on. The examples given above can be used as references should you make an attendance action plan for your institution or company.