ttSent to Parents & Carers of Year 7 Students on 10/11/26

Information for Year 7 Parents & Carers

Department for Education’s Attendance & Mentors Evaluation

 

Please read this email carefully as it contains information about how your young person’s data will be used.

Westbourne Academy is taking part in the Attendance Mentors Programme – a national evaluation for the Department for Education to understand attendance. Westbourne Academy has been randomly selected as an intervention school. This means mentoring is taking place in your child’s school.

The research team at the Centre for Evidence and Implementation will collect some information about the child in your care to understand how to support pupils to go to school regularly. This is a whole school process – this letter has been sent to all parents/carers regardless of their child’s attendance.

Note: Receipt of this email does not mean that your child has been selected for mentoring support at this stage. If your child is selected, you will be given further information.

What is the Attendance Mentoring Programme?

Some children find it difficult to go to school. The attendance mentoring programme will support children with low attendance to work on their challenges so that they can go to school more.

The programme is being delivered by Etio. The programme is being evaluated by the Centre for Evidence and Implementation. The programme is funded by the Department for Education and the Youth Endowment Fund.

What does the evaluation involve?

To understand if mentoring helps young people, we will collect some information about the child in your care. We are looking at school-level attendance. That means we will receive your child’s data even if they do not have a mentor.

What information will we collect?

The information is already kept by your school – your child does not need to do anything. It includes:

  • Demographic information (age, gender, ethnicity etc.)
  • School attendance levels
  • Exclusions data (if they have been excluded from school and why)
  • Exam results (GCSEs, if they take them between 2025-2026)

What happens to the information?

  • All information about young people will be kept safe and private. Only the evaluation team can see it.
  • Reports will not include any names or identifying information.
  • We will only share information if we are worried about a young person’s safety or the safety of others, or if we are required to do so by law.
  • We have a Data Privacy Notice (DPN) which gives you more detail

Archive

The funder of this project will store some non-identifiable data for at least five years. This data will not be linked to your young person’s name.

Can I say no?

Yes, you can say no.

  • If you are happy for your young person’s data to be used in this research, you do not need to do anything.
  • If you do not want your young person’s data to be used, please reply to this email with the statement below before Friday 20 November. Withdrawing your child’s data from the attendance mentors evaluation means that the child in your care will not be offered mentoring to support them at school.

 

“I, YOUR NAME, would like to withdraw FULL NAME OF YOUR CHILD in Year 7 at Westbourne Academy from the evaluation”

 

Who can I speak to if I have questions?

If you have any questions, you can contact me at the school at wes-office@attrust.org.uk or Amy Hall from the evaluation team at attendancementors@ceiglobal.org.

 

Kind Regards

Mr A Smith

Assistant Principal