Local Authority Attendance Officer

The Education Improvement and Standards team strives to deliver outstanding services for our customers, predominantly the children of Coventry, who may require access to education or alternative education provision. We ensure vulnerable children are appropriately supported; have a voice, which hopefully leads to their high achievement and excellent progress.

The Service is made up of a diverse range of teams all working together to recognise, support and apply innovative solutions to address the growing issues in relation to trying to educate some of our most vulnerable pupils in schools.

The service is responsible for delivering statutory duties for the Council in respect of:

• Pupil attendance enforcement
• Children missing education
• 6th day provision for permanently excluded pupils
• The administration of the Fair Access and Supported Transfer process; and
• Child licensing and employment

We value diverse perspectives and experiences and are striving to create an inclusive workplace culture that is accepting of all and is free from discrimination and bias.

In line with our One Coventry Values we strive to have a workforce that reflects our local communities and welcome applicants from all sections of the community. We particularly welcome applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds, applicants who have a disability and applicants who are from the LGBTQ+ community to apply for our senior leadership roles.

Our Values are:

The Attendance and Children Missing Education Team is seeking to recruit a suitably experienced officer to support the local authority to fulfil its statutory duties, responsibilities and powers for school attendance by ensuring that legal processes are followed for court and enforcement proceedings.

This is a fixed-term role for 18 months.

All candidates must have the Right to Work in the UK. We are currently not offering sponsorship for this role.

This post is exempted under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and as such, appointment to this post will be conditional upon the receipt of a satisfactory response to a check of police records via Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).

The successful candidate will have experience of advising schools, parents, stakeholders and partners regarding all issues that impact on children and young people’s ability and opportunities to access education and will additionally have knowledge of:

• the legal framework related to school attendance
• legislation relating to Education and Children Missing Education
• issues which may cause poor school attendance
• intervention programmes to remove barriers to learning
• safeguarding procedures

The Local Authority Attendance Officer will have responsibility for delivering the DfE statutory duty around school attendance and developing initiatives and interventions with children, young people and parents/carers in order to improve attendance. They will also advise, evaluate and challenge schools on the effectiveness of schools’ procedures for the monitoring of overall and persistent absence and producing court files for presentation in the Magistrates Court for cases of non-attendance.

If you would like further information regarding this post, please contact: viv.blinco@coventry.gov.uk

For full details on the application process please read the attached document on our jobs page labelled 'Coventry City Council Application Process'

Interview date: Thursday 9th July 2026

Coventry has a proud, innovative and creative spirit that throughout its history has seen communities come together to tackle problems and bring about real social change.

We are cutting-edge, challenging, youthful, vibrant and diverse.

At Coventry we are committed to excellence in everything we do. With around 5100 staff from a range of different backgrounds, our aim is to recruit and develop talented people who will focus on our customers, take responsibility, work together and find better ways of doing things.

To deliver the best services to our residents, we need the best people working for us to make a difference to our communities.

If you join us, we will provide a fantastic rewards and benefits package - to find out more please visit https://www.coventry.gov.uk/council-vacancies